Essentially, yes, it’s demographic. The biggest part of Welfare spending is the state pension and other old age benefits.
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And with the rise in the age from which you can begin to claim the state pension, there will presumably be a growing number of older people claiming working age benefits too?
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Questions arising as to where the money would come from to increase defence spending.
Currently in Scotland, free prescriptions and free university tuition fees cost the Scottish government around £2.5 billion.
A simple way to make savings is to means test these “freebies”.
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I seem to recall that the free prescriptions didn’t cost much when it was introduced as 90% were free anyway. What it did highlight was how high pharmacy fraud actually was.
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I just picked up on your figures as they didn’t correspond to what you said they were, for UK, Germany or France. I gave you a chance to explain what they were or admit they were bollocks
That I only pointed to the French figure you gave is of no importance.
The point is you mislead, post in bad faith and divert to more moronic nonsense.
Either put up or shut up!
So what do those figures you posted correspond to?
That is important when discussing such matters.
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I don’t recall prescribed items being free previously.
And a quick Google search has the cost today at £1.6 billion.
I think a challenge here is that the spending mentioned above is by the Scottish government. It may be funded in part, or whole, by the money it gets from Westminster, but the choice as to how to spend it lies with those running the government in Scotland.
Whereas defence spending is presumably all done from Westminster?
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Certainly in Wales, health is devolved. Defence is not. And Scotland has greater devolved powers than Wales does.
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One point that I think is quite important is that we got this Brexit result but it didn´t have to necessarily be exactly this way.
There were lots of possibilities and permutations, for better and for worse eventualities. Basically the Brexit we got didn´t have to be the Brexit we got. And this makes the right or wrong question a bit more complicated.
In life sometimes you make a good decision or plan and execute it badly. Not saying it was a good plan or not, but you get the point.
They were always free for children, over 60s, pregnant women, the chronically ill and people on benefits. There were exclusions to these, I can’t recall them offhand. The upshot is that most people who needed a prescription got them for free anyway. The introduction of free prescriptions really only affected working people who tended not to need many prescriptions anyway.
The upshot is that most of the cost of the free prescriptions was offset by making it much easier to administer. What they didn’t expect was the amount of fraud going on. Pharmacists receive an admin fee (I think it was about £2) for processing a prescription and are then refunded the difference in the medicines prescribed compared to the prescription fee. So if the prescription fee was £6 and the medicine was £9 they would receive £9 + £2 - £6 from the prescription pricing authority. If the drugs were under £4, then they would actually owe the PPS money.
What the scam was, is that for cheap things like penicillin, some pharmacies were binning the prescription and keeping the full £6 fee that had been paid in good faith. It was only after free prescriptions were introduced that this fully came to light.
That will be the total drugs bill, i.e. the prescription admin fee plus the cost of drugs. To work out the cost of free prescriptions, you need to work out the number of individual prescriptions and then deduct the number that would be free. If it was in line with what is charged in England, I would guess that would bring in around £100million. The cost of administering that would be around £50million (£20 per head qualifying?)
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That’s a fair point, but if you simply look at the division it created, any version has been a failure.
Fair points.
But still a significant amount of money goes on prescriptions for those not financially in need of freebies.
Same goes for tuition fees and free bus travel.
But as stated, different budget source than defence
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I don´t think any version necesarily but this version, yep I think so.
Not just for the UK either. It´s been bad for the EU.
I think the whole process created the division, the result has deepened it. Combine that with the doubling down or polarised thinking I’ve mentioned above, there’s a huge gap between people now.
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I´think the division was already there and forming and Brexit was a response to it, not the cause. A bit of Annales School of me but I think that´s how these things really go.
I suppose if you mean division with the EU then it brought it to the surface.
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Welsh dont need defence money, anyone invades Wales, and the welsh will respond on instinct and face the invaders with nothing more than a few ferrets.
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There is absolutely a conversation to be had about the balance of immigration but this is on point. That’s not the real problem.
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It wasn’t non sensical. It was to see whether you would vote for a Party you hate, even if you were aware that them being elected would result in the best outcome for the UK? It was hypothetical, anyhow, I think you answered my question.
How is it trollish, I clearly referred to the Voters. Infact, I couldn’t have made it more clearer.
Again, I was referring to the Voters. The more left leaning especially. There is no listening, no consideration of other people’s concerns. Your opinion and views are seen as right because you view them as morally correct, anyone whose views are slightly right of centre is wrong and stereotyped.
A prime example.
.
You are entitled to believe it was the wrong decision. People are entitled to believe it was the right decision. The “Simple Fact” is that it has happened. Are you going to let your resentment to this define your future?
In hindsight the whole Brexit argument was toxic and still is.
I know I am going to get pulled up by the usual crowd on here, but both sides were guilty of lying or exaggerating and scare mongering.
In my opinion, and I accept it’s my opinion, but it should have been easier for Remain to sell the Remain Vote. I mean, people don’t like change do they, Remain could control what would happen if they won the vote, The problem was they didn’t sell it, they focused on what would happen if we left.
Of course people voting Leave didn’t know what they were voting for. How could they? It was speculation, Deals still had to be negotiated. In fact one of the only things they knew was that Cameron would oversee the Exit negotiations and yet that was just a big fat lie.
Another thing that people Voting leave didn’t know, is that for the rest of their Lives the Remainers will label them, blame them, drag their heels at every opportunity so that they can tell you that you were wrong and even after 10 years still be bitter.
The simple fact is that, whether we like it or not we are where we are. As individuals we can either be positive and make the best of our Lives/situation or let a sliding doors moment define our future.