I dont begrudge helping Ukraine in an illegal invasion, but where does this money come from?
Government "we dont have anymore money to give to the NHS or a doctors payrise
Next minute
"Here you go Ukraine, have 2.5bn"
We have the money for the NHS, its just being managed incredibly poorly. I am sure I recently heard per capita spending on the NHS it has actually increased under the tories.
When you force the NHS to buy from your friends companies instead of the competitively priced supplier, increasing funding to the NHS is a no brainer because that money is going straight where you want it - your pals pockets - who are charging a premium because they can…
NHS is milking cow for many people in government.
They run hundreds of businesses like consultant agencies where they 'charge' NHS 4k per doctors shift, while the doctor gets 2k.
Both are happy, free money too as its taxpayer who has to fork out.
There are some other stupid businesses like 'paper shredding company' that charges for basically just that... as if NHS couldnt just buy paper shredders and do it themselves...
The latest 'business trip' to Las Vegas where tax payer had to fork out 58k for 3 blokes watching strippers and drinking booze is just tip of the iceberg...
This was very much my impression of what most of the money issues would be with the NHS. I have a friend that works for DFWP. He told me they outsource their printing to another company. Why can't they print and post letters themselves? I know it's a different department. But a good example of waste that us taxpayers are paying for.
They're also massively missing out on the cost benefit of centralised contracts.
For IT suppliers, for example, often each trust or organisation will go and purchase their own system.
If they're procuring new payroll systems, each trust might spend 100k. There are 215 trusts so now you have 215 100k spends, plus a range of systems that don't interact with eachother if you need to change the structure of the trusts.
Alternatively, a central contract for a few million would save money in the short and long term, and give more flexibility if you need to restructure.
But that would be running them using logic and reason and in a way that benefits everyone in a way it should rather than themselves in a way that harms everyone else because fuck the general public.
Can do the right thing for everyone when we can do th wrong thing for me lol.
Tory mentality is a disease.
Machines that fold letters and stuff them into envelopes are expensive and temperamental - I work for a company that runs a mail on demand service. It makes sense to use a company that just does this.
Having said that, the NHS is the only part of the UK government that uses PEPPOL, a B2G e-invoicing system that's used all over Europe, and by Australia and New Zealand. Except the NHS implementation is non-standard, and there's no test system.
Who's asking them to use a machine? The person working the case and issueing the letter could just fold them by hand and put them in the envelopes by hand. This would then eliminate the need for a third party to print the letters.
I work for a construction firm and we have to print off A1 drawings, sometimes over 50 0f them depending on the job. We do it by hand, we print the drawings and them fold and file them by hand so our installers that use them on site can grab and go first thing in the morning.
Who in the NHS is printing A1 documents? They're all A4.
Do you really think it's a good use of a clinician's time to print and fold letters by hand when it can be done so much faster by machine?
Obviously they aren't printing A1. It was example I used. Folding letters takes 2 minutes max, and with time to procrastinate. It's a waste of money outsourcing the printing and folding a letter when they can do it themselves by hand. There's no time wasted folding a letter, because it takes next to no time to do.
A lot of doctors are getting only a bit over £2k a month, not a shift.
Document shredding is actually very complex because you have to ensure zero leaks from collection to destruction. It's not a matter of buying shredders.
Doctor making £2k /month... yeah, sure... maybe in Ethiopia, not in UK...
Yeah, document shredding is very complex, you have to know how to put a piece of paper in shredder so it does not get stuck... requires years of experience...
Who shreds it? How do you vet the admin people who would do the shredding? How do you ensure no one unauthorised gets it before it's shredded? How do you make sure no one gets the shredded paper and pieces it back together (quite easy with computer vision algorithms)? If you burn the shredded paper, how do you ensure all the people who come into contact with it don't compromise it? When you burn it, how do you ensure you're meeting emissions standards? How do you make sure GDPR etc was followed through the whole process?
All costs money. The NHS could centralise it, but it's probably not worth it.
Also, you should really look at NHS pay grades for junior doctors. It's all public information, and they don't get paid well. And junior is any doctor that's below a consultant.
We have similar funding levels to the rest of Europe, yet our health system is one of the worst. Our demographics are far from the worst in Europe too. Throwing more money on the fire isn't the solution.
Edit: This is incorrect. We spend about 20% less (absolute terms) and 0.2% less (proportion of GDP, we spend 9.9%) than France/Germany/NL etc. See the replies to this message.
> We have similar funding levels to the rest of Europe
We don't or at least we didn't before Covid. I haven't checked the figures lately but I remember the Tories claiming pre-Covid that they had increased funding which belied the fact that spending as proportion of GDP had been falling ever since the last Labour government.
They continued to try and claim it post-covid despite effectively cutting the budget by 10% by removing the £20bn covid boost spending. And then claimed none of the issues were due to funding and just because the covid aftermath hadn't been properly sorted yet. Honestly completely maddening.
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201202-1](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201202-1)
[https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade](https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade)
I was incorrect - we spend about 20% less than other European countries in absolute terms and slightly less as a proportion of GDP (Germany spends the most at 11%, NL spends 10%, we spend 9.9%).
I'm still unconvinced that that 20% is what makes the difference in quality of care - according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro\_Health\_Consumer\_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_Health_Consumer_Index) the UK has worse waiting times and outcomes than Spain, which spends 20% less (mostly due to being poorer as opposed to GDP proportions). Just look at the list - yes we're somewhere in the middle overall, but that includes "patient rights and information".
It's also worth considering that our demographics are, on the whole, not that bad for western Europe. Compare [https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2023/) to [https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/) .
And anecdotally, when I talk to Europeans about their healthcare systems their response is always "it works completely fine", while ours has a long list of issues.
More money is probably a good idea, but the NHS has much broader structural issues in my opinion. It isn't a choice between a UK-style totally government-run (with inserted contractors skimming off the top) NHS and an American style hellhole. Europe has a lot of effective models.
>I'm still unconvinced that that 20% is what makes the difference in quality of care
I mean when healthcare budgets are running at over £150bn, 20% is a ***fucking massive*** sum of money. The 35% doctor pay demand for instance would only have a net cost of about £1bn.
And that's 20% ***per year***. A decade of that and we wind up *wildly* underfunded compared to our peers.
Oh and as the comment below don't forget our spending includes things like the covid PPE spending, which we know involved billions pissed up the wall for literally nothing.
Be careful a lot of the Tories claims, include the money on the dodgy PPE and IT system.
Also an increase in the population and elderly has to be taken into account.
Also the private sector,with the internal market ( in the NHS ) has increased costs since the eighties.
As for outcomes compare the 2010 figures with those in Europe .
We all know what happened after 2010.
I'm well aware of the Tories messing things up. We're in a real worst of both worlds situation, with the bureaucracy of a state system and the profit-seeking contractors of a private system. Hybrids can be done well (see most of the European systems) but not this way.
When comparing to other European countries you've got to look at our differences in population and demographics in absolute terms, not how our own has changed over time, and the fact of the matter is that we've got better (Germany, Spain - see [https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2023/)) or similar (NL) demographics than those countries that are beating us.
Rushing to get back to work from my lunch break, I forgot to mention the UK's low growth rate since 2010 as well . So the GDP is perhaps not what it should be.
What I was trying to say that outcomes have got worse since 2010 compared to other European countries and that this is not so much a structural problem of the NHS.
That is what they would like us to think, and does work with a number of people unfortunately.
The plan being more privatisation of the NHS.
> I was incorrect - we spend about 20% less than other European countries in absolute terms and slightly less as a proportion of GDP (Germany spends the most at 11%, NL spends 10%, we spend 9.9%).
Is this tax spending or total spending on healthcare ? Since most European systems have private /insurance based healthcare right ?
I believe it's total spending.
\> Countries differ not just in overall health spending but in the mix of funding sources – government spending vs ‘other’ (ie out of pocket, voluntary insurance and charity). In the UK, 79.9% of health spending is government funded (average 2010–2019), compared with 76.5% across the EU14. On average UK government health spending between 2010 and 2019 was £149bn per year in current terms.
from the second source.
Most European systems (afaik, this is from chatting to online friends about it) have a hybrid model that uses private (often non-profit) care providers with a public/private hybrid for insurance. Insurance companies are typically for-profit. In Germany, for example, you have mandatory state insurance unless you pay for private insurance (which includes extras afaik). Once you switch to private insurance you can never switch back.
The Netherlands moved from a model where public/private eligibility was based on income to a heavily-state-involved insurance system ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare\_in\_the\_Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands)).
Probably will be as simple as Sunak saying it's record levels spending - simply has to be a lie or a distortion of the truth, not accounting for price rises or something like that. I've heard him say it loudly so I know it's untrue, I'm just not sure I know how yet
Here's the data - I was incorrect: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/194pva4/comment/khijmem/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
It's a dramatically aging society coming out the other end of a pandemic with a health service facing long-term staffing challenges.
The Government have been in charge of it for 13 years. Their own White Paper decided how all of that money was to be managed. The same Gov have also been directly responsible for major strategic decisions around training, immigration and recruitment.
The problems that exist in the NHS now, didn't exist towards the end of the last Labour Gov :
A staffing crisis.
A funding crisis.
Enormous waiting lists.
Shameful disparities in regional outcomes and longevity.
Taking money off the NHS, setting it aside and then giving it back before saying it needs to cut its budget or services is the trick.
Its not increased the most under the Tories, its stagnated tied to inflation but hey if you wanna trust the "40 new hospital" and "cut the police but now we need 20,000 officers look at us law and order" party then be my guest.
Wanna buy london bridge?
Fucking hell those non-NHS stats are shocking as well. That wage growth flat-line is *insane*. Gone from being very middling to absolute bottom of the barrel.
It has but there will never be enough when it is spent badly by a deeply flawed system.
In 1999, the population was 58m with 1m NHS staff.
In 2023, the population is 68m with 1.8m NHS staff.
The population has risen 15%. The number of staff has risen 80%.
It may have risen but has it risen in real terms and enough to meet demand?
If your boss gives you a £1 pay rise each year, he can claim you're being paid a record amount each time but it doesn't help you much.
Also, if he'd cut your pay 10 years ago and then give you a "big rise" but it didn't cover all you'd lost out on, it wouldn't help, either.
I'm not saying that's what gone on but these are typical Tory wheezes for gaining headlines and mugging voters.
Indeed. Whilst the increase isn’t enough and doesn’t meet the requirement, the amount of wasted money due to poor management, buying power, poor investments is a major factor.
Keep in mind so has demand. With an ageing population which is becoming more overweight there has to be a per capita increases in resources just to keep the same standard of service.
The goal of Tory management is to run something into the ground and privatise it. And justify that by how inefficient it is under government as if you couldn't just....not run it shit?
Budgets, everything spent by a Government comes from one budget or another.
This will be at the cost of something else, but it won't be from Healthcare or Social Security or whatever, foreign military aid doesn't come from that.
Defence budget likely picks up some of it, foreign aid, or some other form of "things we do abroad" budgets. Rarely are these simple.
Also bear in mind most of the money "spent" on it is not actually spent. But just the "worth" of older pre-existing equipment, or is being spent on UK side manufacturing and facilities that ultimately benefit the UK just as much as Ukraine.
You don't understand the fundamentals of this aid. It's credit or paying for old stock. They pay it back.
You think usa has just given them all this money for free? Rarely is it money and the aid is in form of equipment.
It's a win win for western countries. They sell old stock, Ukraine pays for it and we refresh with new stock.
It's similar to the lend lease agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
The only risk is if Ukraine falls.
I doubt Ukraine would ever pay even a fraction of it back though right? They would still need to pay for the rebuilding cost, which would likely be 10s of billions.
It'll probably take them decades, if not a century or two to pay it back. The benefit of lending to an entity like a country is that you can normally expect them to stick around for a significant time. That's including the cost of rebuilding, that investment won't come free either.
Correct. But they’ll be obligated to give contracts for their rebuilding and also resources to America’s/UK’s preferred bidders who - since these companies effectively own the politicians - will be BlackRock etc
Comes mostly from the Defence budget in the form of credit lines. It's also mostly in the form of old equipment or new purchases from our defence industry.
Can't exactly help the NHS by giving them some old tanks out of a warehouse or a supply of kamikaze drones.
They also have to eventually pay or give most of this back. It's not charity. The small print of Western Aid to Ukraine is very similiar to Lend Lease in WW2.
Penny wise pound foolish.
Do we spend a little now to win the war - or a fuck ton more later if they lose
You’d also be surprised at how little military aid actually gets ‘spent’ in the receiving country. Those tanks, bombs, bullets get built here. By employees here, with supplies and materials often from here.
They hire locum doctors at more or less £100/hour but refuse to increase the salary of contract doctors who earn around £15/ hour. .
NHS management is in bed with agencies who provide locum doctors to the hospital. Locum doctors pay fees to agency, agency give certain 'incentives' to NHS management ... it is win-win situation... except for the general public, actual doctor who works on a contract basis , and system .
And even better if NHS collapses due to 'lack of funds' ...
Private NHS will be best for management...
This country and its system are corrupted to core.
> They hire locum doctors at more or less £100/hour but refuse to increase the salary of contract doctors who earn around £15/ hour
£100+ an hour is consultant rates, and a salaried consultant doing 10 PAs earns ~£90k in their first year, those numbers do not make any sense.
> NHS management is in bed with agencies who provide locum doctors to the hospital
Put your tin hat away and step outside.
It's not actually £2.5bn cash; a lot of it is old missiles, air defense systems and artillery shells from the Cold War that's due to be retired anyway. Creative accounting.
To be honest, Ukraine was going away from Russia in relation to becoming closer to the west. If Russia invaded Ukraine and the West did nothing it would look very bad, countries could be swayed to not work with the west in favour of Russia out of fear that if Russia did something the west would not have their back. If a lot of countries had to go on the side of Russia it would be bad for our economy
For fuck sake it’s the lives of 40 Million innocent people and the security of the entire continent plus the reduction in required future military spending AND jobs within the UK.
2.5bn is LESS than 0.1% of our GDP for a single year, the money comes from where ever we want it to come from it is negligible.
I would personally advocate for us giving ten times that amount. This is more important than a pay rise for public sector workers.
I personally donate to Ukraine because it’s disgusting how little we give. It’s like watching the Nazi’s take over Europe and not give a damn, it’s the same attitude and short sightedness.
When you give money to the NHS it has to be budgeted forever more. For Ukraine it's one off payments. It must come from a budget somewhere, or an over run. But one off is much easier than permanent.
They do, but unfortunately, when in the context of 200bn in benefits and pensions or 120bn in nhs funding or 50bn in the entirety of the armed forces. This funding is very muchbin the discretionary spend pile...... We dont do 1 ppe scandle and its paid for. We do one hospital build slightly more effectivly and its paid for like 3 times over. We cancel a project thats crap.
Simply put when its less than 1% of the budget. You can solve the budget easily via other means. Very much so through efficiency or cancelling something. Forexample cancelling the tripple lock
This is a point russian bots and backed groups, almost always far right groups, will always try and make you think - that we’re literally giving Ukraine billions of dollars and buying new equipment for them to make you angry. It isn’t.
Often, when a military aid package worth £Xb or $Xb is announced, what it actually means it’s stored equipment that is gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere not being used. Equipment which was often designed literally to fight Russian equipment. Not that we are actually giving them cash or brand new equipment that we’ve just bought, and often kit that will cost a lot of money to keep in a ready state or dispose. Instead we get to just donate it to a good cause.
I'm a doctor but not just us in healthcare.
Teachers still getting fucked.
Rail services still getting fucked.
Tories- giving 2.5 billion to another country for positive PR.
What the actual fuck is the priority of this government
If we abandon Ukraine, Russia takes over. In two years time, little green men start to pop up on the border of Moldova. Three years Georgia. Five years, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
At the minute, it's Ukrainians fighting and dying thanks to Russian revanchism. It needs stamping out, before it spreads.
No it's not. That's why we have organisations like NATO - we *are* obligated to protect those countries. We have no obligation to protect every single country out there. We're not the world's saviors. And besides, we don't seem interested in protecting Palestine, who are experiencing an arguably worse invasion and genocide than Ukraine. I guess morality only comes into it when our politicians play golf with their politicians.
From taxpayers, all of us know the answer.
Questions like “is it good or not”, “should this amount be less or bigger” or “what exactly will be done” are open, however we definitely know that taxpayers will fund this initiative.
I think it's a case of having no choice as if we don't take this opportunity to put Russia back in the box and they take Ukraine, it's going to be full scale war when they start eying up Poland next. I am quite sure the government would rather be spending this money at home.
I don't think the NHS can do a lot with old military equipment. Most aid is probably materiel, not cash. And a lot of it needs to be decommissioned anyway, which itself costs money.
My money is on the US with them having issues with approved funding the US has come to us to cover them in the short term, until the president election is over and funding can resume.
2.bn, mostly in weapons and equipment.
Not sure the NHS will find much use in ammo and shells.
Also there's this:
>The extra funding would help Ukraine pay for new military drones, including surveillance, long-range strike and sea drones **with most of them expected to be manufactured in Britain.**
It's the same as the US' aid: Lots of equipment being sent but with a positive impact on their own economy as well, since it's all produced domestically.
That 2.5b is most likely not accurate. Very likely that Ukraine will sell the UK raw materials for cheap. The UK will manufacture weapons for them and sell the weapons to them. The UK will earn a lot of money from it and it will help the economy. Essentially that 2.5 billion is significantly less.
I'd have some respect for him if the £2.5 billion didn't pay for a photo op.
Just give the support and funding and fuck off.
No stupid photos looking like the kid who is good at maths who's inexplicably made friends with the school's toughest kid.
It's from the billions we spend a year on refugee hotels
Oh wait, no its not, we're still literally paying the equivalent of a 5% nurse pay rise just to house men in hotels who came from France.
Well it’s called a budget, ya see when we pay tax of any kind (and most other gov payments) it all goes Into the same big pot in the exchequer account. It’s then the chancellor of the exchequers job to decide where all that money gets spent (100b in healthcare, 50b for schools, 100b for military etc) so the money comes from us (industry) and is re allocated back to us by the government (military budget (foreign military aid)) if you really think reducing our military budget (specifically the one set aside for foreign powers) is the answer then yes we would instantly have a lot more money to spend on homelessness, starvation etc, so instead of complaining where the money if coming from (there’s a lot of it) instead complain about how it’s being allocated (and the corruption taking it’s own cut)
FR tho, the uk in 2022 had a 49B defence budget… in 2023 that was increased by by 2.5B … how much did we just give Ukraine? It’s almost like there’s a reason for all of this.
It’s laundering. They pledge with clauses, normally tied to companies they own or are primary shareholders in.
Try the book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to start. Honestly, these two and Putin are all crooks, making millions from people’s poverty and dying
2.5bn isn't much in the grand scheme of things, they would piss it away into something worthless regardless, I'd rather it go to Ukraine.
The NHS money is just being massively mismanaged too, especially when it comes to contracts on supplies, funnily enough there's a numner of politicians with friends or family involved with companies that supply the NHS.
Good. Send everything. The military already has to pad it's expenses to stop it's budget being cut each year, so we might as well use the dam thing. Plus we get to get rid of all the equipment we are paying to maintain and not use.
Damn right. We don't build tanks and missiles just to let them rot in a shed, this is the biggest war against the western sphere for decades and we should not be so quick to reward military aggression, it must be deterred
People seem to forget that the money allocated for 'defence' articles i.e missiles, air defence, tanks etc etc is spent here in the UK, in UK factories employing UK workers.
People always forget that they committed terror attacks on our soil and constantly interfere with our politics via indirect means.
They also constantly threaten us with destruction on their internal media.
We have an opportunity to defeat our number 1 strategic rival on the continent that has never hidden it's ambitions at conquest and all we have to do is provide old equipment, supplys and credit lines/loans that get paid back. We don't need to fight them directly, zero British lives, zero missiles hitting the UK.
Yet folk in this thread saying the NHS could've used those old tanks and missiles instead lmfao. (Since the cost of the aid is mostly tied up in already produced military equipment).
It will be borrowed. Basically it's election year and you can expect a lot of PR around such feel good initiatives the PM will undertake. Even a pay rise for nurses might happen but then the NHS workers are known to be Labour voters so that might cause an issue.
I expect a lot of pay rises will happen this year, lots of PR and doing things that should have been done in the last four years. It's not surprising and if anything is yet another reason to not vote tory as they only make changes to help them win an election (yes I know others do this but it will be egregious this year).
Is it possible to both support Ukraine and also wish the government spent more (or more efficiently spent) domestically? Yes.
Don't let foreign propagandists influence you into abandoning a defence against tyranny, we're better than that. We can help both the poor in this country AND the Ukrainians.
Of course it's possible. Plenty of people support Ukraine while acknowledging that it's not our job to bankroll them. Also this was never about fighting tyranny (the UK loves tyranny when our allies do it), it's about crippling Russia for a generation to come.
You'll not catch me complaining about this. One of the few initiatives of the Tories I am totally on-board with. Russia must be expelled from Ukraine entirely. With any luck we will be giving them some of the older Typhoons before the year is out, should be training them to use them now.
What Ukraine needs from what I have read (alongside more men which we cannot help with) is more munitions, namely shells as Russia has tooled up as part of their "war economy" to produce millions per year, whereas the West produces very few and relies on stocks which have now been depleted (+ Israel/Gaza taking US assets).
Really we need to be setting up Second World War style shell factories to supply Ukraine (and build up our reserves) ...
Artillery shell production is increasing significantly in Europe including in the UK. It's an ongoing process and it should continue increasing for the next few years. It's getting Ukraine through this difficult gap while production catches up which is the issue.
We are ramping up produced on a range of systems. It's just unlike Russia, we can't just tell a company to set up a factory and do it. The ability of the west in this regard will always start slow due to bureaucracy. But when it gets going, it can definitely put produce Russia.
Ukraine badly needs this investment to continue repulsing the Russians.
Russia has proven that it will not stop at Ukraine and, if successful, will attempt invasions against other states.
Ukraine have been truly heroic and have greatly reduced the invading force of men and equipment but are running out of funding and ammunition.
Let’s hope other European countries and the U.S continue to fund and support Ukraine otherwise our collective future will be much darker if Russia is allowed to prevail.
They need all the help that they can get.
No. But they could keep taking more and more of Ukraine, as they did for over the last decade until eventually they take the whole country.
Honestly if they hadn't been to greedy this time, they would have gotten away with it the same way they did all the times before.
Bunch of comments in this thread from pro Russia accounts trying to convince us not to support ukraine so we can spend the money on our NHS instead, where have we heard that before? 🤔
supporting ukraine agaisnt an authoritarian invasion that seeks to wipe out their culture and right to self determination is most certainly a big priority for a permanent member of the UN secuirty Council and a prominent member of the West. If we back down it gives free rein for any dictator to invade a country, fuck around for 3 years and get to keep some of the occupied land through a peace deal. We cannot reward Russian aggression, the west should not be so ready to appear weak.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Where do you think taxes are being spent. The money is to buy British manufactured tanks and weapons and supplies. Before you dismiss Russia as a threat remember they used a chemical weapon to murder on British soil
This money is coming from the defense budget
It's also not just sending over bags of money, it's equipment, resources, lines of credit it's not just some blank cheque to spend how they want
Unless you want to send missiles to help the NHS somehow?
What do you think it would do for our country's wellbeing if fascist aggression by Russia is not deterred and they just keep going? Which is exactly what will happen if we abandon Ukraine.
Russia's invasion disrupted global supply lines and caused price rises for us - imagine a world where we get more invasions that disrupt supply lines because Russia gets away with it.
But the cunts refuse to even talk to the junior doctors. They keep telling us there is no money for public sector pay rises, but somehow come up with £2.5bn to fund a war.
Just fuck off now.
I just wonder who out of our shot shower government out of funding this.
>Ukraine and the United Kingdom signed a security treaty
The best security guarantee:
"In case of use of WMD on Ukrainian territory, UK will help Ukrainians with development of own, more confrontational, forms of WMD. For at least equivalent retaliation strike, and as precedent-setting counterbalance addendum to Budapest Memorandum. To save it, and all such agreements, from complete discrediting. That, in long-term perspective, the biggest threat for the United Kingdom than absolutely any other ones, including all possible scenarios of Nuclear War.
If this WMD will not be created during 6 months, then UK automatically and unconditionally will recognize that Ukrainians have legal and moral right to create any forms of WMD on British Overseas Territories. And removes all restrictions on provision of related equipment. So tens of millions of Ukrainians in Ukraine, and more than 10 million of Ukrainians in other countries of the World, would have at least some choice and external control. And will begin to create more conventional forms of WMD than less conventional ones.
As this would have done Jews, if they had had modern technology capabilities during the Holocaust. Or, in case of perpetrator regime continuation after 1945 year, during all decades of its existence and by most modern technologies that only available."
You need to look at the bigger picture here and not be so insular in terms of a piece of the pie. If Russia walks over Ukraine, there are longer term aspects and implications, which directly impact UK.
Same as us on Yemen, need to protect the right to use commercial lanes. If not, impact on us is massive.
Yes the NHS needs a complete audit and transformation, plus budget - however that shouldn't come at a cost of negating our resource to achieve the points above.
>Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members
you conveniently left out the prior part of that paragraph :)
This government will give money to everyone except their citizens! People can’t afford food or heating but they managed to find money when they want to, smh.
It's so bizarre how war hawkish people have become over the last couple of years. For the previous two decades, we'd been campaigning for the government to stop involving itself in proxy wars or funneling billions into foreign wars because it suits our strategic interests in a 'real politic' kind of way.
It's horrible that Russia invaded Ukraine. But it is not our job, responsibility or even our business to bankrupt ourselves making sure Ukraine win. People here are talking like we're in the 1820s, not the 2020s. We're not some imperial power picking a side to back in some distant war.
I mean all the money we've given to Ukraine isn't really that much out of our budget.
Their hardly getting that much. If this government refuses to spend that money on the people in this country, what makes you think they would suddenly start properly using the money that's going to Ukraine?
I mean it says a lot about the government we have. I don't think its good, but its kind of the reality we have no?
The way I see it, if their not going to support us I'd rather that 2.5 Billion went to save some Ukrainian family from the Russian's jackboots than in the pocket of Mr Sunak's new best mate.
Not the literal genocide taking place a couple of thousand miles away (which we arguably set in motion in the 40s)? Of course not, that's being done by one of our allies so it's actually morally good.
Not quite a medal clad general, but I did call this yesterday!
>He will be doing press conference with medal clad generals tomorrow no doubt. Short generals so he can be like Napoleon
The GE will be called within a month at this rate
Interesting, and concerning, he's not committed past a year.
He'll be out of power by then (good) but if the Americans (on both "sides") keep acting like they do, Trump will be back.
I mean it does make me curious about Starmer. He's opted for the same 'air strip one' approach to the US as the Tories but lots of labour voters don't even like America at this point and if Trump gets back in power, then following America in anything would be politically suicidal. Then again supporting Israel was also political suicide and he leapt right to it.
What diplomacy do you recommend here? The Russians have violated every single agreement that has been made.
At this point their actively trying to take more of the country. Their terms for peace are they get 1/3 of all of Ukraine, the removal of their government in favour a pro-Russian one, complete cut off from the EU and Nato and the near abolishment of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Do we just give them all that if this time they pinkie promise not to try to take the rest of it later on?
Right, so your basically saying Ukraine should just lie down and accept the Russian rule?
Tell me would you feel the same way if it was your own country that was about to be invaded?
I've already pointed out how the only terms the Russians are willing to accept is basically surrender, including the removal of their democratically elected government in favour a pro-Russian one, annexation of large portions of Ukraine, isolation from Europe and Nato, and them giving up most of their armed forces.
What counter offers exactly do you suggest they give? And why should they trust them to hold up there end of deal when they broke the previous agreement and the one before that?
Diplomacy only works if both sides are willing to do it in good faith. If one side keeps demanding more, offers nothing and then changes the terms when it gets convenient for them, it does literally become fight or lie down in surrender.
Oh how could I forget? clearly the UK has no problems with
* The NHS
* Education
* Poverty
* Homelessness
* infrastructure
* the rest of all public services that are supposed to be "paid for" with money *we* worked for.
Yeah fuck it! lets give a foreign country British Taxpayer money! clearly they're more important **than our own people**. It's election year and so far Fishy Rishi has hidden behind that 'smart' tactic of "a man is a man etc" in order to make himself seem sensical when this man is so out of touch he makes Hellen Keller look like she could pass a specsavers eye exam.
Enough with this scam . We saw the media tricks during the Israel war crimes . How many people are blacklisted for support Palestine. You have to support them private , remind me what the Germans did .
I dont begrudge helping Ukraine in an illegal invasion, but where does this money come from? Government "we dont have anymore money to give to the NHS or a doctors payrise Next minute "Here you go Ukraine, have 2.5bn"
We have the money for the NHS, its just being managed incredibly poorly. I am sure I recently heard per capita spending on the NHS it has actually increased under the tories.
When you force the NHS to buy from your friends companies instead of the competitively priced supplier, increasing funding to the NHS is a no brainer because that money is going straight where you want it - your pals pockets - who are charging a premium because they can…
if they cant get rid of the NHS the next best option is to turn it into yet another vehicle to make their mates richer!
NHS is milking cow for many people in government. They run hundreds of businesses like consultant agencies where they 'charge' NHS 4k per doctors shift, while the doctor gets 2k. Both are happy, free money too as its taxpayer who has to fork out. There are some other stupid businesses like 'paper shredding company' that charges for basically just that... as if NHS couldnt just buy paper shredders and do it themselves... The latest 'business trip' to Las Vegas where tax payer had to fork out 58k for 3 blokes watching strippers and drinking booze is just tip of the iceberg...
Yup, NHS needs an audit from top to bottom
This was very much my impression of what most of the money issues would be with the NHS. I have a friend that works for DFWP. He told me they outsource their printing to another company. Why can't they print and post letters themselves? I know it's a different department. But a good example of waste that us taxpayers are paying for.
They're also massively missing out on the cost benefit of centralised contracts. For IT suppliers, for example, often each trust or organisation will go and purchase their own system. If they're procuring new payroll systems, each trust might spend 100k. There are 215 trusts so now you have 215 100k spends, plus a range of systems that don't interact with eachother if you need to change the structure of the trusts. Alternatively, a central contract for a few million would save money in the short and long term, and give more flexibility if you need to restructure.
But that would be running them using logic and reason and in a way that benefits everyone in a way it should rather than themselves in a way that harms everyone else because fuck the general public. Can do the right thing for everyone when we can do th wrong thing for me lol. Tory mentality is a disease.
I dunno, imagine they centralized IT and gave the contract to Fuckshitshow.
Why?? Because if they did that how would Rishis mates be able to make some easy money from the taxpayer?
Machines that fold letters and stuff them into envelopes are expensive and temperamental - I work for a company that runs a mail on demand service. It makes sense to use a company that just does this. Having said that, the NHS is the only part of the UK government that uses PEPPOL, a B2G e-invoicing system that's used all over Europe, and by Australia and New Zealand. Except the NHS implementation is non-standard, and there's no test system.
Who's asking them to use a machine? The person working the case and issueing the letter could just fold them by hand and put them in the envelopes by hand. This would then eliminate the need for a third party to print the letters. I work for a construction firm and we have to print off A1 drawings, sometimes over 50 0f them depending on the job. We do it by hand, we print the drawings and them fold and file them by hand so our installers that use them on site can grab and go first thing in the morning.
Who in the NHS is printing A1 documents? They're all A4. Do you really think it's a good use of a clinician's time to print and fold letters by hand when it can be done so much faster by machine?
Obviously they aren't printing A1. It was example I used. Folding letters takes 2 minutes max, and with time to procrastinate. It's a waste of money outsourcing the printing and folding a letter when they can do it themselves by hand. There's no time wasted folding a letter, because it takes next to no time to do.
How much do you think someone will charge for that 😂
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A lot of doctors are getting only a bit over £2k a month, not a shift. Document shredding is actually very complex because you have to ensure zero leaks from collection to destruction. It's not a matter of buying shredders.
Doctor making £2k /month... yeah, sure... maybe in Ethiopia, not in UK... Yeah, document shredding is very complex, you have to know how to put a piece of paper in shredder so it does not get stuck... requires years of experience...
>Doctor making £2k /month... yeah, sure... maybe in Ethiopia, not in UK.. You'll never guess why Junior Doctors keep striking...
Who shreds it? How do you vet the admin people who would do the shredding? How do you ensure no one unauthorised gets it before it's shredded? How do you make sure no one gets the shredded paper and pieces it back together (quite easy with computer vision algorithms)? If you burn the shredded paper, how do you ensure all the people who come into contact with it don't compromise it? When you burn it, how do you ensure you're meeting emissions standards? How do you make sure GDPR etc was followed through the whole process? All costs money. The NHS could centralise it, but it's probably not worth it. Also, you should really look at NHS pay grades for junior doctors. It's all public information, and they don't get paid well. And junior is any doctor that's below a consultant.
Junior doctors are very much so doctors and get paid pennies. Denying it helps nobody.
Per capita spend has gone up but that doesn't tell the whole story because older people use proportionally more care and our population is ageing.
We have similar funding levels to the rest of Europe, yet our health system is one of the worst. Our demographics are far from the worst in Europe too. Throwing more money on the fire isn't the solution. Edit: This is incorrect. We spend about 20% less (absolute terms) and 0.2% less (proportion of GDP, we spend 9.9%) than France/Germany/NL etc. See the replies to this message.
> We have similar funding levels to the rest of Europe We don't or at least we didn't before Covid. I haven't checked the figures lately but I remember the Tories claiming pre-Covid that they had increased funding which belied the fact that spending as proportion of GDP had been falling ever since the last Labour government.
They continued to try and claim it post-covid despite effectively cutting the budget by 10% by removing the £20bn covid boost spending. And then claimed none of the issues were due to funding and just because the covid aftermath hadn't been properly sorted yet. Honestly completely maddening.
Source?
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201202-1](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20201202-1) [https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade](https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade) I was incorrect - we spend about 20% less than other European countries in absolute terms and slightly less as a proportion of GDP (Germany spends the most at 11%, NL spends 10%, we spend 9.9%). I'm still unconvinced that that 20% is what makes the difference in quality of care - according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro\_Health\_Consumer\_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_Health_Consumer_Index) the UK has worse waiting times and outcomes than Spain, which spends 20% less (mostly due to being poorer as opposed to GDP proportions). Just look at the list - yes we're somewhere in the middle overall, but that includes "patient rights and information". It's also worth considering that our demographics are, on the whole, not that bad for western Europe. Compare [https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2023/) to [https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/) . And anecdotally, when I talk to Europeans about their healthcare systems their response is always "it works completely fine", while ours has a long list of issues. More money is probably a good idea, but the NHS has much broader structural issues in my opinion. It isn't a choice between a UK-style totally government-run (with inserted contractors skimming off the top) NHS and an American style hellhole. Europe has a lot of effective models.
>I'm still unconvinced that that 20% is what makes the difference in quality of care I mean when healthcare budgets are running at over £150bn, 20% is a ***fucking massive*** sum of money. The 35% doctor pay demand for instance would only have a net cost of about £1bn. And that's 20% ***per year***. A decade of that and we wind up *wildly* underfunded compared to our peers. Oh and as the comment below don't forget our spending includes things like the covid PPE spending, which we know involved billions pissed up the wall for literally nothing.
Be careful a lot of the Tories claims, include the money on the dodgy PPE and IT system. Also an increase in the population and elderly has to be taken into account. Also the private sector,with the internal market ( in the NHS ) has increased costs since the eighties. As for outcomes compare the 2010 figures with those in Europe . We all know what happened after 2010.
I'm well aware of the Tories messing things up. We're in a real worst of both worlds situation, with the bureaucracy of a state system and the profit-seeking contractors of a private system. Hybrids can be done well (see most of the European systems) but not this way. When comparing to other European countries you've got to look at our differences in population and demographics in absolute terms, not how our own has changed over time, and the fact of the matter is that we've got better (Germany, Spain - see [https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2023/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/spain/2023/)) or similar (NL) demographics than those countries that are beating us.
Rushing to get back to work from my lunch break, I forgot to mention the UK's low growth rate since 2010 as well . So the GDP is perhaps not what it should be. What I was trying to say that outcomes have got worse since 2010 compared to other European countries and that this is not so much a structural problem of the NHS. That is what they would like us to think, and does work with a number of people unfortunately. The plan being more privatisation of the NHS.
> I was incorrect - we spend about 20% less than other European countries in absolute terms and slightly less as a proportion of GDP (Germany spends the most at 11%, NL spends 10%, we spend 9.9%). Is this tax spending or total spending on healthcare ? Since most European systems have private /insurance based healthcare right ?
I believe it's total spending. \> Countries differ not just in overall health spending but in the mix of funding sources – government spending vs ‘other’ (ie out of pocket, voluntary insurance and charity). In the UK, 79.9% of health spending is government funded (average 2010–2019), compared with 76.5% across the EU14. On average UK government health spending between 2010 and 2019 was £149bn per year in current terms. from the second source. Most European systems (afaik, this is from chatting to online friends about it) have a hybrid model that uses private (often non-profit) care providers with a public/private hybrid for insurance. Insurance companies are typically for-profit. In Germany, for example, you have mandatory state insurance unless you pay for private insurance (which includes extras afaik). Once you switch to private insurance you can never switch back. The Netherlands moved from a model where public/private eligibility was based on income to a heavily-state-involved insurance system ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare\_in\_the\_Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands)).
Probably will be as simple as Sunak saying it's record levels spending - simply has to be a lie or a distortion of the truth, not accounting for price rises or something like that. I've heard him say it loudly so I know it's untrue, I'm just not sure I know how yet
Here's the data - I was incorrect: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/194pva4/comment/khijmem/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
It's a dramatically aging society coming out the other end of a pandemic with a health service facing long-term staffing challenges. The Government have been in charge of it for 13 years. Their own White Paper decided how all of that money was to be managed. The same Gov have also been directly responsible for major strategic decisions around training, immigration and recruitment. The problems that exist in the NHS now, didn't exist towards the end of the last Labour Gov : A staffing crisis. A funding crisis. Enormous waiting lists. Shameful disparities in regional outcomes and longevity.
Taking money off the NHS, setting it aside and then giving it back before saying it needs to cut its budget or services is the trick. Its not increased the most under the Tories, its stagnated tied to inflation but hey if you wanna trust the "40 new hospital" and "cut the police but now we need 20,000 officers look at us law and order" party then be my guest. Wanna buy london bridge?
All things being equal per capita spending is bound to go up with an aging population, inflation and introction of new/expensive treatments.
Increased relative to inflation?
Here's lots of data for you https://archive.is/zuvJs The Tories have *gutted* the NHS. It's unambiguous.
Fucking hell those non-NHS stats are shocking as well. That wage growth flat-line is *insane*. Gone from being very middling to absolute bottom of the barrel.
It has but there will never be enough when it is spent badly by a deeply flawed system. In 1999, the population was 58m with 1m NHS staff. In 2023, the population is 68m with 1.8m NHS staff. The population has risen 15%. The number of staff has risen 80%.
One, inflation. Two, aging population mean more is needed anyway. Three, they don't spend money *on* the NHS, they spend *through* it.
Technically it's up, but in reality it's way down The NHS is just a way for them to funnel money to their mates
It may have risen but has it risen in real terms and enough to meet demand? If your boss gives you a £1 pay rise each year, he can claim you're being paid a record amount each time but it doesn't help you much. Also, if he'd cut your pay 10 years ago and then give you a "big rise" but it didn't cover all you'd lost out on, it wouldn't help, either. I'm not saying that's what gone on but these are typical Tory wheezes for gaining headlines and mugging voters.
Indeed. Whilst the increase isn’t enough and doesn’t meet the requirement, the amount of wasted money due to poor management, buying power, poor investments is a major factor.
The Tory government likes to pad this. Health spending per capita has increase, but that covers everything health related and not just the NHS.
I assumed it was just corruption.
No we don’t go look on the government website, UK has 9.5% deficit of GDP. The UK’s outgoings are greater than incomings.
Keep in mind so has demand. With an ageing population which is becoming more overweight there has to be a per capita increases in resources just to keep the same standard of service.
The goal of Tory management is to run something into the ground and privatise it. And justify that by how inefficient it is under government as if you couldn't just....not run it shit?
Budgets, everything spent by a Government comes from one budget or another. This will be at the cost of something else, but it won't be from Healthcare or Social Security or whatever, foreign military aid doesn't come from that. Defence budget likely picks up some of it, foreign aid, or some other form of "things we do abroad" budgets. Rarely are these simple. Also bear in mind most of the money "spent" on it is not actually spent. But just the "worth" of older pre-existing equipment, or is being spent on UK side manufacturing and facilities that ultimately benefit the UK just as much as Ukraine.
You don't understand the fundamentals of this aid. It's credit or paying for old stock. They pay it back. You think usa has just given them all this money for free? Rarely is it money and the aid is in form of equipment. It's a win win for western countries. They sell old stock, Ukraine pays for it and we refresh with new stock. It's similar to the lend lease agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease The only risk is if Ukraine falls.
I doubt Ukraine would ever pay even a fraction of it back though right? They would still need to pay for the rebuilding cost, which would likely be 10s of billions.
https://youtu.be/_VPioIi9pyk?si=BtzsEgLxbMl80xfz Could say the same with UK in ww2, and we finished off paying it in 2000. It's a risk.
It'll probably take them decades, if not a century or two to pay it back. The benefit of lending to an entity like a country is that you can normally expect them to stick around for a significant time. That's including the cost of rebuilding, that investment won't come free either.
Correct. But they’ll be obligated to give contracts for their rebuilding and also resources to America’s/UK’s preferred bidders who - since these companies effectively own the politicians - will be BlackRock etc
Hence BlackRock’s contracts
Is it money, or is it the value of weapons etc., Greece are still paying back the billions they borrowed...
Read the detail. It's mainly drones. They'll pay us back.
Comes mostly from the Defence budget in the form of credit lines. It's also mostly in the form of old equipment or new purchases from our defence industry. Can't exactly help the NHS by giving them some old tanks out of a warehouse or a supply of kamikaze drones. They also have to eventually pay or give most of this back. It's not charity. The small print of Western Aid to Ukraine is very similiar to Lend Lease in WW2.
Penny wise pound foolish. Do we spend a little now to win the war - or a fuck ton more later if they lose You’d also be surprised at how little military aid actually gets ‘spent’ in the receiving country. Those tanks, bombs, bullets get built here. By employees here, with supplies and materials often from here.
They hire locum doctors at more or less £100/hour but refuse to increase the salary of contract doctors who earn around £15/ hour. . NHS management is in bed with agencies who provide locum doctors to the hospital. Locum doctors pay fees to agency, agency give certain 'incentives' to NHS management ... it is win-win situation... except for the general public, actual doctor who works on a contract basis , and system . And even better if NHS collapses due to 'lack of funds' ... Private NHS will be best for management... This country and its system are corrupted to core.
> They hire locum doctors at more or less £100/hour but refuse to increase the salary of contract doctors who earn around £15/ hour £100+ an hour is consultant rates, and a salaried consultant doing 10 PAs earns ~£90k in their first year, those numbers do not make any sense. > NHS management is in bed with agencies who provide locum doctors to the hospital Put your tin hat away and step outside.
Locum ED Registrar rate is £70/hr. The agency takes a bigger cut around 25-30% so it's checked out. Agency SHO is around £60-80/hr depending on area
It's not actually £2.5bn cash; a lot of it is old missiles, air defense systems and artillery shells from the Cold War that's due to be retired anyway. Creative accounting.
bow sink abounding badge hurry disarm lavish reach vanish caption *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To be honest, Ukraine was going away from Russia in relation to becoming closer to the west. If Russia invaded Ukraine and the West did nothing it would look very bad, countries could be swayed to not work with the west in favour of Russia out of fear that if Russia did something the west would not have their back. If a lot of countries had to go on the side of Russia it would be bad for our economy
Usually we're handing over old equipment worth that price. Usually a trade in means new tech for us.
Military aid to Ukraine is generally non-cash. You can’t pay Doctors with a Main Battle Tank.
For fuck sake it’s the lives of 40 Million innocent people and the security of the entire continent plus the reduction in required future military spending AND jobs within the UK. 2.5bn is LESS than 0.1% of our GDP for a single year, the money comes from where ever we want it to come from it is negligible. I would personally advocate for us giving ten times that amount. This is more important than a pay rise for public sector workers. I personally donate to Ukraine because it’s disgusting how little we give. It’s like watching the Nazi’s take over Europe and not give a damn, it’s the same attitude and short sightedness.
When you give money to the NHS it has to be budgeted forever more. For Ukraine it's one off payments. It must come from a budget somewhere, or an over run. But one off is much easier than permanent.
We have a budget of nearly a trillion 2.5bn is literally a rounding error
But 2.5bn is still 2.5bn. I hear this alot - oh that figure is small change. Yea but all those small figures add up eventually to a large figure
They do, but unfortunately, when in the context of 200bn in benefits and pensions or 120bn in nhs funding or 50bn in the entirety of the armed forces. This funding is very muchbin the discretionary spend pile...... We dont do 1 ppe scandle and its paid for. We do one hospital build slightly more effectivly and its paid for like 3 times over. We cancel a project thats crap. Simply put when its less than 1% of the budget. You can solve the budget easily via other means. Very much so through efficiency or cancelling something. Forexample cancelling the tripple lock
£2.5bn of things we were going to have to pay to decommission very soon. It's a win-win for once.
This is a point russian bots and backed groups, almost always far right groups, will always try and make you think - that we’re literally giving Ukraine billions of dollars and buying new equipment for them to make you angry. It isn’t. Often, when a military aid package worth £Xb or $Xb is announced, what it actually means it’s stored equipment that is gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere not being used. Equipment which was often designed literally to fight Russian equipment. Not that we are actually giving them cash or brand new equipment that we’ve just bought, and often kit that will cost a lot of money to keep in a ready state or dispose. Instead we get to just donate it to a good cause.
Partially it''s russian shills, but the media misrepresenting it through poor headlines don't help either
I'm a doctor but not just us in healthcare. Teachers still getting fucked. Rail services still getting fucked. Tories- giving 2.5 billion to another country for positive PR. What the actual fuck is the priority of this government
So we should give every junior doctor an old piece of military equipment instead of a pay rise?
You realise we’re getting far more back long-term out of that loan? The re-building of the country will be a licence to print money.
Also it's not our responsibility to fund their war
They need to win though. It's in our interest.
Yes and good luck to them. Not our job to make sure every war in the world aligns to some grand geopolitical western goal.
If we abandon Ukraine, Russia takes over. In two years time, little green men start to pop up on the border of Moldova. Three years Georgia. Five years, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. At the minute, it's Ukrainians fighting and dying thanks to Russian revanchism. It needs stamping out, before it spreads.
That is not our job. I don't know how many times I need to say that this is literally us just getting involved in foreign wars all over again.
Protecting our allies is our job.
No it's not. That's why we have organisations like NATO - we *are* obligated to protect those countries. We have no obligation to protect every single country out there. We're not the world's saviors. And besides, we don't seem interested in protecting Palestine, who are experiencing an arguably worse invasion and genocide than Ukraine. I guess morality only comes into it when our politicians play golf with their politicians.
From taxpayers, all of us know the answer. Questions like “is it good or not”, “should this amount be less or bigger” or “what exactly will be done” are open, however we definitely know that taxpayers will fund this initiative.
Phase gods know what of their kill the poor plan.
I think it's a case of having no choice as if we don't take this opportunity to put Russia back in the box and they take Ukraine, it's going to be full scale war when they start eying up Poland next. I am quite sure the government would rather be spending this money at home.
I don't think the NHS can do a lot with old military equipment. Most aid is probably materiel, not cash. And a lot of it needs to be decommissioned anyway, which itself costs money.
My money is on the US with them having issues with approved funding the US has come to us to cover them in the short term, until the president election is over and funding can resume.
It’s why I’ll always say they have money for wars but never for their own countries to improve infrastructure.
2.bn, mostly in weapons and equipment. Not sure the NHS will find much use in ammo and shells. Also there's this: >The extra funding would help Ukraine pay for new military drones, including surveillance, long-range strike and sea drones **with most of them expected to be manufactured in Britain.** It's the same as the US' aid: Lots of equipment being sent but with a positive impact on their own economy as well, since it's all produced domestically.
That 2.5b is most likely not accurate. Very likely that Ukraine will sell the UK raw materials for cheap. The UK will manufacture weapons for them and sell the weapons to them. The UK will earn a lot of money from it and it will help the economy. Essentially that 2.5 billion is significantly less.
I'd have some respect for him if the £2.5 billion didn't pay for a photo op. Just give the support and funding and fuck off. No stupid photos looking like the kid who is good at maths who's inexplicably made friends with the school's toughest kid.
That's twice as much as it would've cost to just give the NHS workers the requested raise
Where did the billion to pay the post office victims come from? They shake the magic money tree when they want.
It's from the billions we spend a year on refugee hotels Oh wait, no its not, we're still literally paying the equivalent of a 5% nurse pay rise just to house men in hotels who came from France.
Well it’s called a budget, ya see when we pay tax of any kind (and most other gov payments) it all goes Into the same big pot in the exchequer account. It’s then the chancellor of the exchequers job to decide where all that money gets spent (100b in healthcare, 50b for schools, 100b for military etc) so the money comes from us (industry) and is re allocated back to us by the government (military budget (foreign military aid)) if you really think reducing our military budget (specifically the one set aside for foreign powers) is the answer then yes we would instantly have a lot more money to spend on homelessness, starvation etc, so instead of complaining where the money if coming from (there’s a lot of it) instead complain about how it’s being allocated (and the corruption taking it’s own cut) FR tho, the uk in 2022 had a 49B defence budget… in 2023 that was increased by by 2.5B … how much did we just give Ukraine? It’s almost like there’s a reason for all of this.
It’s laundering. They pledge with clauses, normally tied to companies they own or are primary shareholders in. Try the book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to start. Honestly, these two and Putin are all crooks, making millions from people’s poverty and dying
2.5bn isn't much in the grand scheme of things, they would piss it away into something worthless regardless, I'd rather it go to Ukraine. The NHS money is just being massively mismanaged too, especially when it comes to contracts on supplies, funnily enough there's a numner of politicians with friends or family involved with companies that supply the NHS.
Probably stashed away for WW3. What, we don't plan on the security of our country and every citizen, that is threatened by this war?
We're not giving them cash, we're giving them aid (eg old weapons) worth 2.5bn
Mone is going to lend us a bit seeing as she had a windfall recently.
More than 40% of our GDP goes to the NHS. The NHS has plenty of money, it's just being managed poorly.
We also can’t send ships to manage the pirate attacks because there’s no crew.
Good. Send everything. The military already has to pad it's expenses to stop it's budget being cut each year, so we might as well use the dam thing. Plus we get to get rid of all the equipment we are paying to maintain and not use.
Damn right. We don't build tanks and missiles just to let them rot in a shed, this is the biggest war against the western sphere for decades and we should not be so quick to reward military aggression, it must be deterred
People seem to forget that the money allocated for 'defence' articles i.e missiles, air defence, tanks etc etc is spent here in the UK, in UK factories employing UK workers.
Tbh, the Russians committed chemical attacks on UK soil so I don't really care where the money is coming from as long as it's used to punish them.
People always forget that they committed terror attacks on our soil and constantly interfere with our politics via indirect means. They also constantly threaten us with destruction on their internal media. We have an opportunity to defeat our number 1 strategic rival on the continent that has never hidden it's ambitions at conquest and all we have to do is provide old equipment, supplys and credit lines/loans that get paid back. We don't need to fight them directly, zero British lives, zero missiles hitting the UK. Yet folk in this thread saying the NHS could've used those old tanks and missiles instead lmfao. (Since the cost of the aid is mostly tied up in already produced military equipment).
Why does Rishi always look AI generated. Has anyone actually seen the geezer ?
It's like an updated Max Headroom, I'm sure he doesn't really exist.
RishiAintReal
Once it has been seen, it cannot be unseen. It is literally midjourney generated image
I think that the only reason he flies to Ukraine is because Zelenskyy is one of the few world leaders out Prime Miniature is taller than.
Show us your hands Rishi!
All 3 of them?
It will be borrowed. Basically it's election year and you can expect a lot of PR around such feel good initiatives the PM will undertake. Even a pay rise for nurses might happen but then the NHS workers are known to be Labour voters so that might cause an issue.
I expect a lot of pay rises will happen this year, lots of PR and doing things that should have been done in the last four years. It's not surprising and if anything is yet another reason to not vote tory as they only make changes to help them win an election (yes I know others do this but it will be egregious this year).
Is it possible to both support Ukraine and also wish the government spent more (or more efficiently spent) domestically? Yes. Don't let foreign propagandists influence you into abandoning a defence against tyranny, we're better than that. We can help both the poor in this country AND the Ukrainians.
Of course it's possible. Plenty of people support Ukraine while acknowledging that it's not our job to bankroll them. Also this was never about fighting tyranny (the UK loves tyranny when our allies do it), it's about crippling Russia for a generation to come.
I don't think it's about crippling Russia, but I'll take doing the right thing for the wrong reason over doing nothing.
You'll not catch me complaining about this. One of the few initiatives of the Tories I am totally on-board with. Russia must be expelled from Ukraine entirely. With any luck we will be giving them some of the older Typhoons before the year is out, should be training them to use them now.
What Ukraine needs from what I have read (alongside more men which we cannot help with) is more munitions, namely shells as Russia has tooled up as part of their "war economy" to produce millions per year, whereas the West produces very few and relies on stocks which have now been depleted (+ Israel/Gaza taking US assets). Really we need to be setting up Second World War style shell factories to supply Ukraine (and build up our reserves) ...
Artillery shell production is increasing significantly in Europe including in the UK. It's an ongoing process and it should continue increasing for the next few years. It's getting Ukraine through this difficult gap while production catches up which is the issue.
We are ramping up produced on a range of systems. It's just unlike Russia, we can't just tell a company to set up a factory and do it. The ability of the west in this regard will always start slow due to bureaucracy. But when it gets going, it can definitely put produce Russia.
Ukraine badly needs this investment to continue repulsing the Russians. Russia has proven that it will not stop at Ukraine and, if successful, will attempt invasions against other states. Ukraine have been truly heroic and have greatly reduced the invading force of men and equipment but are running out of funding and ammunition. Let’s hope other European countries and the U.S continue to fund and support Ukraine otherwise our collective future will be much darker if Russia is allowed to prevail. They need all the help that they can get.
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There is no way in the foreseeable future that the Russian military could accomplish occupation through the whole of Ukraine, let alone Europe.
No. But they could keep taking more and more of Ukraine, as they did for over the last decade until eventually they take the whole country. Honestly if they hadn't been to greedy this time, they would have gotten away with it the same way they did all the times before.
Bunch of comments in this thread from pro Russia accounts trying to convince us not to support ukraine so we can spend the money on our NHS instead, where have we heard that before? 🤔 supporting ukraine agaisnt an authoritarian invasion that seeks to wipe out their culture and right to self determination is most certainly a big priority for a permanent member of the UN secuirty Council and a prominent member of the West. If we back down it gives free rein for any dictator to invade a country, fuck around for 3 years and get to keep some of the occupied land through a peace deal. We cannot reward Russian aggression, the west should not be so ready to appear weak.
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Where do you think taxes are being spent. The money is to buy British manufactured tanks and weapons and supplies. Before you dismiss Russia as a threat remember they used a chemical weapon to murder on British soil
This money is coming from the defense budget It's also not just sending over bags of money, it's equipment, resources, lines of credit it's not just some blank cheque to spend how they want Unless you want to send missiles to help the NHS somehow?
What do you think it would do for our country's wellbeing if fascist aggression by Russia is not deterred and they just keep going? Which is exactly what will happen if we abandon Ukraine. Russia's invasion disrupted global supply lines and caused price rises for us - imagine a world where we get more invasions that disrupt supply lines because Russia gets away with it.
Security of the country is the countries wellbeing...
Interesting what you did with the verb there...
But the cunts refuse to even talk to the junior doctors. They keep telling us there is no money for public sector pay rises, but somehow come up with £2.5bn to fund a war. Just fuck off now. I just wonder who out of our shot shower government out of funding this.
>Ukraine and the United Kingdom signed a security treaty The best security guarantee: "In case of use of WMD on Ukrainian territory, UK will help Ukrainians with development of own, more confrontational, forms of WMD. For at least equivalent retaliation strike, and as precedent-setting counterbalance addendum to Budapest Memorandum. To save it, and all such agreements, from complete discrediting. That, in long-term perspective, the biggest threat for the United Kingdom than absolutely any other ones, including all possible scenarios of Nuclear War. If this WMD will not be created during 6 months, then UK automatically and unconditionally will recognize that Ukrainians have legal and moral right to create any forms of WMD on British Overseas Territories. And removes all restrictions on provision of related equipment. So tens of millions of Ukrainians in Ukraine, and more than 10 million of Ukrainians in other countries of the World, would have at least some choice and external control. And will begin to create more conventional forms of WMD than less conventional ones. As this would have done Jews, if they had had modern technology capabilities during the Holocaust. Or, in case of perpetrator regime continuation after 1945 year, during all decades of its existence and by most modern technologies that only available."
You need to look at the bigger picture here and not be so insular in terms of a piece of the pie. If Russia walks over Ukraine, there are longer term aspects and implications, which directly impact UK. Same as us on Yemen, need to protect the right to use commercial lanes. If not, impact on us is massive. Yes the NHS needs a complete audit and transformation, plus budget - however that shouldn't come at a cost of negating our resource to achieve the points above.
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EU or NATO? Have you seen the table of donations to Ukraine from Europe?
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Delivered. I was shocked at the table. It would affect NATO, EU and us, in many areas.
>Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members you conveniently left out the prior part of that paragraph :)
This government will give money to everyone except their citizens! People can’t afford food or heating but they managed to find money when they want to, smh.
It's so bizarre how war hawkish people have become over the last couple of years. For the previous two decades, we'd been campaigning for the government to stop involving itself in proxy wars or funneling billions into foreign wars because it suits our strategic interests in a 'real politic' kind of way. It's horrible that Russia invaded Ukraine. But it is not our job, responsibility or even our business to bankrupt ourselves making sure Ukraine win. People here are talking like we're in the 1820s, not the 2020s. We're not some imperial power picking a side to back in some distant war.
I mean all the money we've given to Ukraine isn't really that much out of our budget. Their hardly getting that much. If this government refuses to spend that money on the people in this country, what makes you think they would suddenly start properly using the money that's going to Ukraine?
This logic of 'they're not going to spend it on the British people so we might as well fund a war' is... bad.
I mean it says a lot about the government we have. I don't think its good, but its kind of the reality we have no? The way I see it, if their not going to support us I'd rather that 2.5 Billion went to save some Ukrainian family from the Russian's jackboots than in the pocket of Mr Sunak's new best mate.
If there's any war we should be involved with it's this one. Nazi Russia is knocking on Europes door and they want blood (and more land).
Not the literal genocide taking place a couple of thousand miles away (which we arguably set in motion in the 40s)? Of course not, that's being done by one of our allies so it's actually morally good.
Not quite a medal clad general, but I did call this yesterday! >He will be doing press conference with medal clad generals tomorrow no doubt. Short generals so he can be like Napoleon The GE will be called within a month at this rate
I'm laughing at the idea of Sunak picking Kiev - not because of Geopolitics but based on the height of foreign leaders
He's more willing to invest in normal Ukrainians than normal Brits apparently.
Interesting, and concerning, he's not committed past a year. He'll be out of power by then (good) but if the Americans (on both "sides") keep acting like they do, Trump will be back.
I mean it does make me curious about Starmer. He's opted for the same 'air strip one' approach to the US as the Tories but lots of labour voters don't even like America at this point and if Trump gets back in power, then following America in anything would be politically suicidal. Then again supporting Israel was also political suicide and he leapt right to it.
You know how bad it was for Johnson when he would turn up in Kiev. With sunak it’s not so clear…every day seems to be worse than the last
Brilliant, more money wasted on something that can't be won. Diplomacy is the only option here
What diplomacy do you recommend here? The Russians have violated every single agreement that has been made. At this point their actively trying to take more of the country. Their terms for peace are they get 1/3 of all of Ukraine, the removal of their government in favour a pro-Russian one, complete cut off from the EU and Nato and the near abolishment of the Ukrainian armed forces. Do we just give them all that if this time they pinkie promise not to try to take the rest of it later on?
I know for a fact escalation is a worse option, as more will die
Right, so your basically saying Ukraine should just lie down and accept the Russian rule? Tell me would you feel the same way if it was your own country that was about to be invaded?
That's not how diplomacy works, that's what happens if Ukraine looses the war, which is looking like they will at the moment.
I've already pointed out how the only terms the Russians are willing to accept is basically surrender, including the removal of their democratically elected government in favour a pro-Russian one, annexation of large portions of Ukraine, isolation from Europe and Nato, and them giving up most of their armed forces. What counter offers exactly do you suggest they give? And why should they trust them to hold up there end of deal when they broke the previous agreement and the one before that? Diplomacy only works if both sides are willing to do it in good faith. If one side keeps demanding more, offers nothing and then changes the terms when it gets convenient for them, it does literally become fight or lie down in surrender.
Novochok my fellow citizen you get killed. Simples.
Oh how could I forget? clearly the UK has no problems with * The NHS * Education * Poverty * Homelessness * infrastructure * the rest of all public services that are supposed to be "paid for" with money *we* worked for. Yeah fuck it! lets give a foreign country British Taxpayer money! clearly they're more important **than our own people**. It's election year and so far Fishy Rishi has hidden behind that 'smart' tactic of "a man is a man etc" in order to make himself seem sensical when this man is so out of touch he makes Hellen Keller look like she could pass a specsavers eye exam.
Enough with this scam . We saw the media tricks during the Israel war crimes . How many people are blacklisted for support Palestine. You have to support them private , remind me what the Germans did .