Yup. As the old joke goes ...
How do you know someone went to Oxford ? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
The unfortunate thing is that we have been governed by a party which takes that unhealthy attitude towards senior party members, they have always been more about who you know than what you know. You don't see the same proportion of Oxbridge grads in the current opposition.
Slightly anecdotal, my first job after graduating (from former polytechnic Loughborough) was in Cambridge for a company formed by a couple of Cambridge grads. There was a higher proportion of non Oxbridge grads at the company, I think we tended to have more practical experience.
How does it select leaders? By finding the most talented, or by finding those who are controllable?
Seems like the institutions are dual use.
David Cameron - Eton, Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, went straight into politics.
Theresa May studied Geography at Oxford, worked at Bank of England and a few other institutions for a while.
Boris Johnson - Eton, study of the Classics, ancient literature and classical philosophy. Worked as a journalist, was fired for lying, then became a politician.
How many politicians are hired or promoted by prime ministers not because of quality or background but social debts between families? Nobody really tracks those relationships.
Eton isn't regarded as a particularly good school. It is relatively expensive, and preferred by people outside the UK. Their academic results aren't that strong.
And social connections are an aspect of almost every political party. Blair hired almost everyone in Derry Irvine's chambers. Most of the SNP are not only friends, they are actually related to each other. The Tories are possibly the least incestuous because Cameron made a concerted effort to widen the reach of the party in the mid-2000s (this is why the current Cabinet is so diverse).
The reason why there is a concentration of Oxbridge is because, when most of these people went to uni, they were far and away the best. In Scotland, you see the exact same thing with Edinburgh (and strangely, no-one talks about the fact that almost of Sturgeon's clique went to Glasgow...which is, generally, an inferior university). And what you are actually seeing now is that more and more politicians are going to other universities reflecting the fact that non-Oxbridge unis caught up in the 90/00s (and recently, they have dropped off far more...Imperial is ahead in sciences, Oxford PPE is still very good though).
Looking at Instagram there are undeniably many physically fit Americans. In reality their physical fitness is notable because it is relatively rare.
Elite universities are sustainable in an industrial society where scarcity of resources means there are only so many high positions.
In a post-industrial society knowledge is the resource. Elite universities then instead mean you have a lack of resources.
Err, no.
Don't get me wrong, the Oxbridge system accepts, fosters and matriculates some very bright, very smart people.
But that is not at all what the core of the "Elite University" system is about, it's about connections and maintaining a single degree of freedom between the families that collectively hold > 90% of the wealth, resources, and influence within UK society.
Pretty much any male politician whose official actions could be described as inhuman or sociopathic has been through boarding school trauma.
In a post-industrial society, or beyond that, you aren't tied to physical resource in the same way. Instead you are limited by the amount of people with relevant knowledge. The existence of elite universities in such a society is really more saying that you can't produce enough people and opportunities.
Arriving at a village finding there is only one person with a car you don't say "wow, this guy is successful" you say "ouch, this is a poor village" even if that is the most successful person in the village. Because these days we expect cars and if everyone had cars he wouldn't stand out as successful.
Who is "We" here?
I think it would be reasonable to claim the two main parties come from very similar backgrounds. Both seem to be happy continuing with maintaining their status quo.
Without their consent, is it likely or possible to see a third option rise?
I've been interviewing graduates in the UK for many years now from a very broad range of universities, all focused on CS or stem degrees.
In my experience, I've yet to interview an oxbridge graduate who wasn't at least great academically, and this is speaking as someone who went to a lesser university. Clearly whatever standards they have for teaching and entry selection criteria really work.
That said, graduates from other universities are easily on par with oxbridge, just that there were some total morons amongst their peers as well.
In my opinion, the problem is not that the UK fetishes oxbridge candidates, the problem is politics is dominated by arts and ppe graduates which does not offer the problem solving skills stem degrees do. I genuinely think we'd be in a much better place if our leaders weren't trained just in communication, but instead on actually logically thinking through problems and resolving them.
The other half of the problem is that the archaic UK parliament needs to change, its not fit for the 21st century.
For example ...
MP's perks and expenses - why do MPs get HEAVILY subsidised food and drink ? why do they get such generous expenses ? why do they get Friday's off ? why do they get so many recess holidays ? why does the whole place shut down for party conference silly season ?
Prime Minister's Questions - Its a disgrace. The clue is in the word "Questions". Instead it's a farcical theatrical display where someone asks a question and then the Prime Minister doesn't answer it and/or the Prime Minister's backbenches ensure the answer gets drowned out in noise.
Planted Questons - All the planted questions from the Prime Minister's back benches. What's all that about ? Do they really think people are that stupid ?
Too many "gentleman's agreements" - For example, what's with the whole "you can 'unknowingly' lie, but you can't accuse others of lying" thing ?
Lack of independent scrutiny - Enquiries and investigations are all based on the "gentleman's agreement" that the Prime Minister can be trusted to be a "good man" and will therefore, of course, launch any necessary investigations into alleged acts of wrong doing. However as we saw with Johnson, well ....
Ministerial Code - The ultimate joke. A code with no teeth. Again, Johnson demonstrated how circles could be run round it.
Archaic "parliamentary protocol" - So many examples here, perhaps one of the most infamous is Christopher Chope MP shouting "object" and blocking progress of the Up-skirting bill. The perogueing of parliament by the Johnson government in relation to Brexit is another.
Because the bulk of the work of an MP is in being at home spending time talking to the bosses (i.e. the constituents) to ensure that the correct message is brought back to the central meeting place (i.e. parliament). After all, you, the constituent, are hiring the representative to carry your message to the central meeting place so you don't have to make the trip yourself. But you still have to make your message known. MPs are most definitely not mind readers who can simply be elected and then never spoken to again. It is a time consuming process to sit down with each and every constituent to hear their voice.
And, well, I guess if an MP really is a mind reader and doing such a great job that his bosses don't feel the need to talk during these recess periods, why not allow a nice vacation? An MP figuring out how to be more efficient than other MPs shouldn't be penalized. The recess will still be necessary for the poorly performing MPs to go home and get tuned in by their bosses.
Its awfully cute when people think that's an acceptable answer, it goes awfully well with that other well known phrase "write to your MP about it".
I know sufficient people across the length and breadth of the UK to know that the reality is that MPs (perhaps especially those who fly the Conservative flag) will do their utmost to avoid and fob off their constituents.
If I had a penny for every person who told me they wrote to their MP and either received no reply or received two-pages of pre-prepared boilerplate that didn't answer the question ... I'd be rich.
As for MPs who have extraordinarily well-paid "advisor" jobs on the side, what's your reasoning for that ?
If you want to ignore your constituents and not bother (and are in a safe seat) you might do less than half of that. But MPs, as a group, are very hard working. I also think that the way we select MPs, incentivise them, and manage them is awful and that's one of the many reasons why the institution of parliament is fairly crap. Unjustified cynicism about individuals is unlikely to fix that.
I do apologise for the form letters, though. That's almost always staff work, with the MP signing the result after a brief skim. We got a lot of mail and much of it was repetitive or crankish so the replies weren't always artisanal...
It’s never fun being the boss, but given that you’ve accepted the role you can be a good boss and stand up to your workers, even as much as they try hard to avoid you, or accept your failings and let your organization fall apart. Your choice.
Aah yes, another favourite old-chestnut, the old "well, you can vote differently next time".
Trouble is that one falls apart when you are reminded that the UK has FPTP (First Past The Post) and not PR (Proportion Representation).
As a result, most people's votes don't really count for much, and you end up with safe seats and all sorts of other problems.
But it favours the big-two parties and hence, like many other problems with UK politics and parliament, it will (likely) never change.
FPTP fails hard when parties get thrown into the mix. But that is when you should stop to ask yourself why are you accepting parties in the first place? The Westminster system really isn't well suited to having parties, even if it has grown to accept them.
I think my point still stands, the whole system could be transformed if some real problem solvers involved. Alas, I don't see it happening any time soon.
The explanation is quite simple. If you subscribe to MMT, the government issues legal tender currency and creates it and today that happens via debt. This means debt just represents untaxed money in the private sector. In other words, the government didn't bother to collect all the money that is in the private sector.
When you understand this, then having a single tax like income tax be the primary source of tax revenue is a bad thing. Let's assume that we have an economy where all income exists in the form of wages and therefore is taxed at the income tax rate of 50% (I can't do this math on the phone, sorry). This means the half the income is taxed once every year. This money has a half life of exactly one year if the government were to use all of it to pay off debt. This means that in this example the government can never really go bankrupt as long as it doesn't do some inherently backwards things that break the economy in the long run.
But what if there are two types of incomes that are taxed at different rates and at different frequency?
What if you have wages and offshore companies where income tax can be delayed indefinitely until you bring the money back home where it is taxed at the usual income tax rate? Then suddenly it is possible for money to be stuck abroad and never taxed for long periods of time. As we know, this is money the government simply didn't bother to collect. It actively lets people keep the money abroad untaxed, so it shouldn't be surprising that the problem cannot be solved by hiking income taxes. The debt has to be extended not because the government is living beyond its means but because it is simply not collecting the money necessary to pay off its debts.
This is supposed to be an illustration, not a perfect description of the real world. I didn't talk about low capital gains taxes. Which also means money could be stuck domestically inside the financial systems.
The lower the tax rate and the lower the frequency of the taxable event, the more time money gets to spend away from the government and the longer the government will spend its time being in debt and I am still assuming that debts are eventually paid off. In principle there is no rule that money can't be stuck in a non productive sector indefinitely which then means the government must constantly intervene by spraying money at the productive sectors so they don't dry out like plants in a desert.
What there is is people with financial savings, and a balancing item in the national accounts because of that. That balancing item occurs naturally, costlessly and without concern as a consequence of the way double entry bookkeeping works.
Money is never stuck because it isn't a thing. It's really just an accounting record.
If you have £50 in your wallet or purse you are 'causing' the balancing item to come about because you have spent it yet.
Tax isn't there to raise money. Tax is there to stop the private sector hiring everybody - so there is somebody left for the public sector to hire to do the jobs the government needs doing to fulfil its democratic mandate.
Roads, education, healthcare, much of these things would either be unprofitable or unaffordable if they have to be self-funding. But they bring social value even if they don't make their own shareholders rich.
When you think about taxation, look at the UK's tax code. Arguably one of the longest and most complex in the world.
Walk into a firm of UK accountants and ask to be shown their copy of Tolly's Tax Handbook....
You'll be led to a room with a bookshelf full of books with Orange and Yellow spines.
The "handbook" is 23,000 pages long.
Tax Avoidance is an artform in the UK.
Tax Evasion is illegal, of course, but avoidance tends to be sufficient for the majority - sufficient legal loopholes and grey-areas are provided in the tax code !
But you do not have to subscribe to MMT.
(I see MMT as wishful thinking by social democrats who have already given up their fight)
This is especially true if you follow MMT. Remember, the whole underlying premise of MMT is that the government's ability to pay for goods and services is not in any way limited by a need to collect money first, that they cannot ever be forced to default on debt denominated in their own currency, that the only actual limiting factor is the actual real resources like labour, raw materials, and so on, and that the purpose of taxation is to keep inflation under control by reducing private demand for those things. From that point of view, money sittting in offshore accounts is a red herring because it doesn't represent consumption of real resources, and wages and money being brought into the country to buy things with are exactly what does need to be taxed because they do represent actual demand which will cause consumption of those resources.
One of those relationships is the corruption feedback loop it creates, with offshore money buying political power which is used to aquire more offshore money.
Since 2010, the UK has declared war on work and now everybody is wondering where productivity is. In the meanwhile everybody is busy talking about grand reforms, such as Scottish secession and leaving the EU.
The young professional can upskill, or work harder, to cover increased income taxes. The pensioner is often unable to work; they're less likely to be fit, and their alertness may be fading.
I'm 66, out of employment for 5 years, and I can't imagine enduring a 9-5 shift. I don't always sleep well, I often need a siesta, and I'm certain I'm much less sharp since I quit employment. My work-rate has fallen a lot.
I don't have a pension as such; I live on the rent on my property. I worked for the money to buy that property; it's not inherited wealth that fell into my lap. My finances are planned around the rental income. If you start taxing my property, how am I supposed to pay? My only choice is to sell the property, reducing my rental income to zero, and rendering me a burden on the taxpayer.
The young professional worked hard to acquire his human capital, that is taxed way more than rental income. Also, salaries in the UK have increased much less than rents.
Besides, properties are taxed everywhere in the world, especially if they are rented out, bar the UK.
BTW: the term "human capital" is usually a euphemism for staff, isn't it? I'm not sure what it is that you think is taxed way more than rental income; my rental income is taxed as income, just as if it was salary from employment. So what is this heavily-taxed "human capital"?
Can you get a reverse mortgage to sell back some of your equity to pay your taxes? Maybe this isn't a think in the UK but it very well could be. I mean if I held market equities and no cash and owed taxes, I don't think I'd get much sympathy not selling some to pay the taxes I owe. I'm not sure why real estate should be treated differently.
It's not a "reverse" mortgage; it's just a mortgage that the lender doesn't expect you to pay off (so when you die, they get a stake in the your estate).
I've thought a good bit about equity-release; I might be forced into it, if my health holds out longer than I've planned for. But I was taught never to use capital for current expenditure. I try to stick to that.
Thing is, it seems wrong to tax the property of someone whose only income is rental from that same property. The only way they can pay the tax is to reduce their stake in the property, and so their ability to pay tax. It's a spiral that ends in disappropriation, and dependence on the state.
In the US it's commonly called a reverse mortgage.
> I've thought a good bit about equity-release; I might be forced into it, if my health holds out longer than I've planned for. But I was taught never to use capital for current expenditure. I try to stick to that.
> Thing is, it seems wrong to tax the property of someone whose only income is rental from that same property. The only way they can pay the tax is to reduce their stake in the property, and so their ability to pay tax. It's a spiral that ends in disappropriation, and dependence on the state.
Sure I agree that you ideally don't want to draw down on your capital, but ideally you'd have the cash to pay the taxes. Going back to the case of equities, if your only income was in the form of dividends and you didn't have enough to pay taxes you owe, you'd need to sell stocks which would decrease future cash flow from dividends.
I don't really see this as fundamentally different than other cases where you don't have enough income to grow your wealth after costs. E.g. when you go in to retirement. I mean it's nice if you have enough capital that you can fully live of off cash you derive from it (rentals, dividends, pensions, etc.), but if you can't then you gotta dip into your capital.
It's just Brexit. The rest will not be allowed to be tried. And Brexit was popular precisely because it located the failed institutions outside the country where they could be a convenient scapegoat, without having to look at the big failing institution: the media-intelligensia-Tory circle of people.
Institutional failure reached the point of allowing Liz Truss to be PM, the UK's shortest PM term at 45 days. The sort of governmental turnover that you'd expect from Italy in the 90s.
(Where's the air disaster type writeup of "how did the Truss failure occur?" in the media? You won't see that because it implicates too many people. Yet it was the organisational equivalent of handing control to an untrained junior who immediately flew the plane into the ground.)
Liz Truss can barely speak in her native language and in normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been allowed to become a member of Parliament, let alone a senior minister or the Prime Minister.
Government turnover in Italy has always been a nightmare since 1945. The difference between the First Republic and the Second Republic is the former basically had the same ruling party and the same electoral law, the latter has had coalitions with very different parties and a different electoral law in almost all the elections.
A lot of people said that about Brexit, before it happened. Scottish independence is a real possibility (although I think it is an equally bad idea).
Whereas the UK government was perfectly capable of carrying out Brexit, it just had totally incoherent ideas of what it wanted and what other parties would agree to.
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/242/pdfs/uksi_20130...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Agreement_(2012)
I vaguely remember they said something like this about the 13 colonies. I wonder what happened to them?
The big opportunity for them would be that they could join the EU. That seems like a massive win. The have lots of potential to generate energy.
Pre-Brexit I would have agreed with you, but clearly being ruled from London isn’t helping anyone but London.
The Northern levelling up is also looking like a joke at this point. Perhaps Manchester, Newcastle and York need to start thinking of independence!
* If Scotland joins the EU then there must be customs checkpoints between England and Scotland. In the era of the modern nation state there has been no such formal border between the two countries. One can only imagine the number of business that rely on completely frictionless transfer of good across the border. At least in the case of Northern Ireland there is a recent historical precedent for border checkpoints (albeit one that's tied to painful memories). And yet look at how that's going.
* Scotland would be poorer. I can very much sympathize with Scots who don't like being ruled by English Tories (I'm English and I don't like it either!), but a lot more money flows from London to Scotland than in the other direction.
* The UK's nuclear deterrent would very likely be compromised. Some might say 'good riddance', but current world events are pretty nicely illustrating the strategic value of nuclear weapons. Scotland's GDP is about 6% of the UK's. It can't afford to fund its own defense. The SNP's plan for defense is either to pretend that it's not required, or just to assume that the remainder of the UK will continue to pay for it. On top of that, the armed forces employ a significant number of Scottish people (both directly and indirectly).
* The UK is already becoming a second-tier actor on the world stage. Split it up into smaller countries and the international influence of each will dwindle further.
The notion that the EU is just waiting for the next English speaking country to join and/or leave every other year is the root of Brexit ideology (as in a set of quasi-coherent beliefs that constitute a world view). It is based on a weird sense of superiority that is not justified in anything that happens in the material world.
Fervent us-or-them competition helps frame anybody else out of the contest.
Was Labour any better at the time?
Corbyn could have campaigned as the "we'll reverse the Brexit decision" and IMHO could have had a decent chance of winning/ forming the government.
No.
I think its well accepted by most people with sensible minds that the reason Johnson got it was because of Corbyn.
Corbyn was basically a bit nuts, he effectively wanted to return the UK to the 1970s.
Corbyn was attractive to the young and politically naïve via his "Momentum" programme, but as we saw with the Red Wall votes, those who were around in the 70s didn't want a return to that, even if it meant lending their vote to the party of Thatcher.
The Blue Wall will highly likely prove to be a one-off, they held their nose and ticked the box because Johnson was the lesser of two evils.
There is no comparison possible with German politics. German politicians wouldn't be councillors in the UK, and their system is totally cooked (Russia appears to have purchased almost all of the SPD, the media is non-existent, the farce around the Merkel transition was incredible).
Junior doctors do not have less purchasing power than a German janitor. One of the main issues with the NHS is doctors going part-time because the pay is so high. The BMA have actually mooted the idea of tax cuts for doctors only between the band of £100-125k in order to get more of them into work (and btw, part of the issue with pay is regional inequality, doctors in London can work two days a week and earn £300k/year...London is distinct). One of the negative aspects of the UK political system is that the BMA has massive political/media/PR influence so people will say things like doctors are underpaid, without connecting to this any other information that they have.
Nurses are generally overpaid too. One of the problems in the NHS has been low productivity, and part of that has been significant growth in nurse numbers. But there is a hard cap on their productivity (and a result pay). Starting pay is £27k/year...for reference, this is as much as engineering grads make (generally speaking, almost all grads are underpaid in the UK apart from those going into tech/finance/medicine...relatively low-skill work is almost always overpaid).
I actually agree with your point in part, a lot of it is naval-gazing but there is a need for more local powers (if you look at what is happening around Manchester, it is clear that this can work). Thankfully, leading politicians of both parties today are largely past it.
Also, public investment isn't being cut whilst taxes are rising...taxes are significantly below the level required to fund public investment. One of the main political issues is that voters don't understand this.
Would this be the same Chancellor who's just resigned in disgrace over ordering HMRC not to investigate him for not paying tax, then threatening any journalist who mentioned it with a libel lawsuit?
> Britain has no shortage of extremely competent politicians
We have a massive shortage of competent politicians at delivering benefits to the country. They're only competent at delivering benefits to themselves. If there wasn't a shortage, Truss would never have been put in charge.
Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period.
No.
> Anyone trying to defend the Tory record has to defend Truss without just memory-holing that whole 45 day period.
And anyone criticizing the system has to explain how someone incompetent was removed so quickly. In any other country, she would have been in power for years.
And the shortage theory would only follow logically if the Tories had then elected someone who was at least as bad...which didn't happen. Truss was bad, but that is all you can really say.
She was polling so badly it was seen as the equivalent of her party coming fourth, behind not only Labour, but also the SNP and the LibDems:
"""That could see the Tories win just 22 seats, behind the SNP on 42, the Lib Dems on 47 and Labour on 515.""" - https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/18/liz-truss-silent-as-poll-poin...
> And the shortage theory would only follow logically if the Tories had then elected someone who was at least as bad...which didn't happen.
Not so; while competence and popularity aren't the same things, none of the candidates for leadership of the Tory party have been of a high standard at least since Cameron left.
Cameron said Sunak was going to lead the party. He is leagues above Cameron (who, for a British politician, was quite average). If you look in the Cabinet, you see the same thing.
Truss was one of the weakest members of the Cabinet (alongside her stooges). But Johnson, for all his faults, was the right man at the right time, and left when he was supposed to. Again, another one of the strengths of our system. And we didn't get a Brown situation (you may have forgotten that Brown also polled under the Lib Dems in the run-up to 2010, Corbyn was leader for how long...and he actually polled under the Lib Dems too in 2019).
Still allowed to criticise the system for allowing her to gain power. No brownie points for the fact that her party recognised she was such a disaster they would cease to be a meaningful political force at the next election, and therefore made it clear that she should resign. This can easily be replicated in other systems. They don't need to have an official way to force leaders out: she, officially, resigned.
> But Johnson, for all his faults, was the right man at the right time, and left when he was supposed to.
Oh god no, he was a walking disaster area well before he became the uncontested replacement for May. He was fundamentally unfit for office and shouldn't have even been allowed to stand as a Tory candidate MP given his pathological incomprehension of the concept of truth as something deeper than an ad hominem attack. Allowing him to be PM has almost certainly undermined UK national security given his complete lack of restraint or self control in either lust or money.
Only reason he won the election is because Corbyn was so unappealing that even the parliamentary Labour party overwhelming rejected him (what was it, all MPs not in the shadow cabinet?), which is exactly him sticking around for years in the way that you're saying doesn't happen in the UK.
But why did he stick around when the Tory MPs could kick out their leaders? Because Labour's leadership contest allowed candidates rejected by the party to be on the ballot, while the Tories (do they still change their method with each leader or was that just the Blair years?) don't.
> And we didn't get a Brown situation (you may have forgotten that Brown also polled under the Lib Dems in the run-up to 2010, Corbyn was leader for how long...and he actually polled under the Lib Dems too in 2019).
That was unusually high LibDem support of 29% instead of the usual 10-15%, not a spectacular catastrophic nose-dive by Brown.
Corbyn should've gone after the first election or the leadership contest. That he didn't proves the UK being parliamentary didn't help.
No, actually
You don't have to know. If they aren't being paid enough, why are so many choosing not to work FT?
And before, you explain how much they are paid...remember that many staff aren't earning FT wages anymore. Because so many are working PT, those that are working PT are being paid locum wages 3x FT.
A first year Junior Doctor has a entry point of £25.5k-£29k.
I will ask you a different question: number of doctors has gone up 10-15% since 2020...why is output lower? If you talk to anyone in the NHS, you will hear about staff shortages...okay...why?
I am leaving you to fill in the gaps here because I suspect you are bone from the eyebrows up and if I told you, you wouldn't believe it.
You talk about senior consultant wages and imply junior doctors are on similar wages when, in reality, theu are no where close.
And I have friends who work in the NHS if you want to play the anecdote game.
I don't imply at any point that junior doctors have the same wage as senior consultants. I have no idea how poor your comprehension has to be to think this.
Okay, then why are we arguing? How many PT per shift? How many locums per shift? This is all stuff that isn't disputed by any side in this debate. You are arguing about stuff that is obvious and self-evident.
It mostly consisted of me pointing out the salary bands for Junior doctors and the person I was replying too angrily denying reality and substituting in their own.
Maybe not as impressive as billionaires, but still impressive. And certainly as a family more valuable than hedge funds.
Whether this is the case or not, Von der Leyen is a visibly average politician. Juncker-tier. You actually wonder if there was some kind of competition to elect the biggest idiot.
Germany works much better than the UK. Just look at salary growth or at the number of strikes that the past 12 years of idiocy unleashed on the UK.
Sunak as a chancellor is responsible for idiocies like Eat Out to Help Out, the stamp duty holiday and losing billions of pound of taxpayers’ money to fraudsters during the pandemic. As a prime minister he can’t manage the strikes and half his cabinet is under investigation (by HMRC or for violations of the ministerial code or bullying). He’s clearly not fit for the role and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And at this point I’m not even expecting a strategic vision, I’d just like somebody that doesn’t increase my tax bill by 10 % every year and loses half of the money like a toddler sent to buy milk and bread.
An NHS consultant makes 70K, that in London is not enough to send a child to nursery and pay the rent (that is: they are poor). A junior doctor makes a fraction of that. For those unaware, depending on the specialty, a junior doctor may be even 35-40 year old. A private doctor may make a lot of money, but I wrote specifically that the NHS can’t hire, not that I can’t find a doctor in Harley Street.
Finally, taxes have gone up (I would have payed £800 less a month in 2009). Sunak alone increased my tax bill by £2-300 a month, while inflation reduced my real income by more than 10%. I don’t have time to find the data, but last time I checked public capital investment as a share of GDP was lower than in 2007.
Or take Covid - our press pushed this tale about South Korea having such effective contact tracing they could lift restrictions and reopen society, whereas our incompetent government failed to do so, but in reality they were actually less successful at doing so and even had their own equivalent of Eat Out to Help Out planned that they completely failed to launch in 2020 because they couldn't keep restrictions lifted for long enough. It's just that tbe British press only reported on them attempting to lift restrictions as proof they succeeded and ignored the part where it kept on failingg and they were almost immediately reimposed, whilst their UK coverage only focused on failures and not on the country being largely out of lockdown for most of summer 2020.
Also, the only zero-fraud option for something like furlough or business support is to deny everyone - every real-world set of anti-fraud checks inevitably blocks some genuine people and permits some fraudsters, I'm sure HN must be familiar with this concept by now, and of course the media attacked the government as incompetent for both. (For example, complaining that businesses couldn't just add people to payroll and immediately claim furlough for them - which would enable massive, trivial fraud - and also that they had no way of detecting if employers were making people come into work whilst claming they were furloughed.) On the other hand, Germany's financial regulator actually opened a criminal investigation into the journalists who investigated the Wirecard fraud, and Germany's own press and politicians failed so hard at challenging this that it fell to journalists from outside the country working for the Financial Times to finally prove it. Those are, qualititively, very different kinds of fraud problems and not in a way that makes Germany look good.
Should we start with the Libor fixing scandal and continue all the way through to the recent PPE scandal? Is this how it works?
The significance of Wirecard may be the fact that one of the biggest German frauds of all time was uncovered by a British newspaper. And after it was discovered, top politicians continued to lobby aggressively for the country for over a year.
The level of corruption is unimaginable to Brits (imagine if Cameron was working directly for Putin...that is what Schroder is doing, indeed most of the SPD male parliamentarians have, one hears, been compromised in Moscow) precisely because of our open institutions. These do not exist in Germany (as has been widely acknowledged even within Germany after Wirecard).
The reason cases do not play out the same way here is because of the Auditor General, because of the FT...this kind of scrutiny is unimaginable to most countries in the EU (why would voters even have such a puerile interest in their representatives? They vote, we lead).
This is a very misleading statement. Here’s a Wikipedia summary of her career, which you could easily have checked:
> In 1980, she switched to studying medicine and enrolled at the Hannover Medical School, where she graduated in 1987 and acquired her medical license.[33] From 1988 to 1992, she worked as an assistant physician at the Women's Clinic of the Hannover Medical School. Upon completing her doctoral studies, she graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1991. Following the birth of twins, she was a housewife in Stanford, California, from 1992 to 1996, while her husband was a faculty member of Stanford University.[34]
> From 1998 to 2002, she taught at the Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health System Research at the Hannover Medical School.[citation needed] In 2001 she earned a Master of Public Health degree at the institution.[35][36][37]
A bit partial I think, for those interested, maybe a more complete profile from BBC (2021): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vp0r
In the US, a resident will earn somewhere in the $50k-$80k range, depending on specialty.
Once out of residency, the average junior salary jumps up to somewhere north of $150k. Although by that point, the doctor is likely almost 30 and possibly carrying $100k+ in student loans. They’re well paid, no question, but makes for non-optimal (for society) choices - harder than it should be for them to enter poor areas or lower salary specialties.
sigh what multiple of salary mortgage are you going to get on that? And what are average house prices?
They drive the narrative. This continued decay is on them. They like to pretend the Truss debacle was something entirely of her own making which they merely observed and reported, but it was an engineered political takedown. The Tories of course are pathetic and spineless so they put up little resistance.
What I don’t like is the current situation in the UK, where I pay more income tax than I would pay in Germany and I also have to pay for healthcare and childcare and education.
The fact that since 2010 this country has been ruled by people whose main qualification is being children or husbands of rich people, doesn't help. From this cold island, Ursula von der Leyen, a failed German politician, looks like a monumental stateswoman.