The malleability of ringfences

Alexander

Personally I would welcome this approach. Whenever I have occasion to use the NHS or visit someone in hospital I have been surprised at how "foreign" it is.

OK, we all know the staff is mainly non-UK but so are the patients. I got the distinct impression that a lot of "relatives" come to the UK for treatment. When I was last in hospital, of 12 patients in a mixed ward I was one of two "Brits" in the ward. I formed the impression that the other 10 were not immigrants but were in fact "visitors" to our country. When I subsequently went to out to the out-patient area, the composition of those waiting confirmed these proportions.

True Bred Pomponian

So the taxes have been imposed and the cuts aren't going to follow. Who'd have thought it?

Arthur

Isn't this how it should be? It's patently absurd that we are subsidising the Indian space programme (if they'd paint a Union flag on the side of their rocket, maybe I'd be a bit happier). Otherwise, everything the government does to help other countries should go into the DfID pot. That includes the BBC World Service, and anything else that people with better imaginations than mine can think of.

TrevorsDen

It does not sound like its worth me spending my £1 to me.

charles hercock

Excellent news.the DoH ringfence given the overall budget is particularly difficult and vire of some Social service and welfare functions will help overall

Simon Stephenson

"As Sylvester says, there's something "absurd" about all this. After all, the government could have reached the same result by not ringfencing health and international development, and giving the other departments more money to spend on their current responsibilities."

Come off it! Sylvester knows perfectly well that ringfencing's just a soundbite, not a serious policy prescription. She also knows that it is a regrettable part of our contemporary culture that there are vast numbers of people with irrational expectations, and that the only way of dealing with these people's absurd indignation is to quell it with misleading reassurances.

Hell, she's a Blair supporter, and what was his claim to fame if it wasn't applying false meaning to statements about policy in order to manufacture instant approval from the more impressionable members of society?

Naomi Muse

If ingenuous then these are to be applauded for we will all see them for what they clearly are - freeborn, honourable and free from deception. For that would be new politics.

If ingenious, we may well still laud them and applaud them for their ingeniousness and skillful contriving.

Naomi Muse

@Simon Stephenson. Are you implying that she's being disingenuous?

Simon Stephenson

Naomi Muse : 10.59am

Whatever gave you that impression?

yank

OK, I wouldn't know a ringfence from a nose ring, but that photograph of Osborne proudly thrusting forward the sacred case reminds me of "Boone" and "Otter" making their case, briefcase and all, in front of "Dean Wormer's" fraternity review commission in Animal House.

Adam

A point of order: DFID's budget isn't ringfenced. What's ringfenced is reaching 0.7% of GDP spend as aid by 2013 (according to internationally accepted definitions). So there's nothing odd about other Departments bidding for aid.A point of order: DFID's budget isn't ringfenced. What's ringfenced is reaching 0.7% of GDP spend as aid by 2013 (according to internationally accepted definitions). So there's nothing odd about other Departments bidding for aid.

Michael

Clearly the Afghanistan military expenditure can easily be classed as aid.

Tankus

"Delving" is not in my vocabulary if money is involved .....

Stephen

Surely this is just the Government's escape clause out of the NHS ringfencing. They can't cut the budget, but by increasing the number of things the NHS is responsible for and not providing extra money for it, the NHS will have to make cuts to its current services, as though there was no ringfencing in place in the first place.

This means Cameron can continue saying the budget has been ringfenced and so not seen as nasty, but can make the necessary cuts the NHS needs

JohnAnt

"delve behind the paywall (or borrow someone's copy of the paper) to read her column."
Pay money to read Rachel Sylvester? You're having a laugh.
On the matter - put a stop to this ring-fencing lunacy.
We're already providing International Aid through the NHS. (Go to your local hospital and see.)

Simon Stephenson

Stephen : 12.38am

Yes, that's about the measure of it.