In or Out of the EU

I've hummed and harred over whether I should vote in of out of the EU for the UK.

My only real reason for voting out is that the structure of the EU organisation. The leaders in the EU are appointed, not elected and are therefore largely unaccountable. They seem to be old political leaders that have lost their positions in their own country's democratic structure and are given jobs as a form of pension. 

Even if they were good and have a "lot of experiance" they have probably lost their drive, ambition, vision and energy to fight for anything the inertia of the EU bureaucracy would resist.

However even worse than this is that many are corrupt, or at least complacent, to value for money in EU expenditure. They have country loyalties and loyalties to colleagues in their old governments that manifests as a bias in the decisions and spending, especially of low profile projects.

And all this means that if they do a very bad job, as unelected officials they cant get kicked out. I'm also concerned with TTIP and the way the EU is negotiating it.

On the other hand the reason to vote to stay in is the moderating effect of the EU on an increasingly right wing and rich elite, which seems to want to subjugate ordinary working people to the lowest possible income while they take the maximum income and blame all the ills of the country on the poor. The junior doctors dispute is a prime example where these workers are being asked to do more for less. Yet when they fight back they are painted as the bad guys for not doing as they are told. 

Another example is this article in the Daily Telegraph 10 Dec 2015

Apparently workers getting paid for their drive to their first job of the day is going to increase business cost. This is so surprising that the British Government has to issue a warning for those business leader who are not paying attention...! 

You don't see the same warnings when CEO salaries or bonuses go up, or when they get some massive pay off and pension package. Apparently these costs to the business don't count. No warning is needed as all the business leaders are paying attention, it means they can get more next year.

However there is another reason why paying people while they travel to their first job is justified. When companies first had vehicles for employees they would be parked in the company car park (motor transport) over night. People would travel to work in their own time and at their own cost pick up their vehicles and travel to their first job. At the end of the day they would leave their last job and park the vehicle in the company car park before making their way home.

This was to do with company insurance (so they said) and what the tax man saw as a taxable perk if people took vehicles home. Plus vehicles were expensive and often formed a pool so that several drivers might use the vehicle over a week.

In the 80's this started to change. The cost of insurance wasn't an inhibition any more. Pool vehicles gave way to allocated vehicles as cost came down. The car parks were valuable land to be used or sold off and there wasn't the loss of productivity as people tokk vehcels to and from the company car park. The parking cost were lost to the business and become a public cost as vehicles were parked on the road. Where thieves might break into a fleet of vehicles in a car park and work undetected (steeling all the batteries, tools etc) in a dispersed home parking model this attractive target was removed. 

In conclusion the businesses had the reward of allowing people to park at home. Have used that money or forgotten it and now want the workers to be unpaid while they get to their first job. The EU saw through this ruse and stopped it 

While I doubt there will be any radical changes in the EU there will be no adverse right wing changes and since Scotland has ousted Labour, there may not be a Labour government for some time. So to keep the Tories (and other right wing views) in check I think (not certain) I'm going to vote to stay in.

Core business v outsourced services

If an NHS trust has £1b budget and £800m is maintaining the buildings then it maybe understandable why funding doesn't reach the core services. 

A commercial operation with £1b of profit to invest, the £800m would not contribute much to increasing the profits for next year and so represents a poor investment. There would be a serious look at how to reduce it and no option would be off the table. 

But there is more in the detail that does't make sense. The builders and labourers repairing and maintaining the building earn more than the nurses repairing and maintaining the patients. The architects and lawyers earn more than the doctors. This can be explained partly by supply and demand but doesn't make it right.

The organisation of the NHS is primarily there to administer health care free of charge at the point of delivery. Everything else is non-core and should be outsourced to someone better able to deliver those services. From cleaning, to the manufacturing of medicine, to building maintenance. At least that is the traditional idea of accountants to make the companies look more profitable and efficient.

The way it works is that money paid to a third party (even if essential to delivering the core business) is money that in theory can be reduced by re-tendering for suppliers forcing them to reduce their costs. In practice it doesn't often work that way. An example.

A care home company was persuaded by their accountants to sell of their property and rent it back. This reduced the capital in the company and made it look more efficient and therefore more profitable. share price went up, the banks were ready to lend more. The directors were so pleased they gave themselves a bonus.

The land that they owned was going up in value and the new owners wanted more rent. The old folk had fixed and limited incomes and couldn't pay more. The company could afford it at first as they had their pot of money from the sale and cheap loans from the banks. But in just 5-years they were in trouble and 7-years they were bust. The increased value of the property would have made them financially look inefficient but would not have made one jot of difference to the core business.  

What they had forgotten was not that the property was their core business, but that it was a core tool for their business.

In the case of the NHS it would be like employing all the nurses from an agency. Obviously nuts as these nurses get paid much better and the NHS couldn't (and can't) afford it. But what is so wrong with the NHS having its own in-house building services?  It is clearly a major cost and must therefore be a core tool to deliver the service. No buildings no NHS.

Of that £800m they are paying out there will be at least £200m of profit to the suppliers. Bringing that in-house would effectively double the amount of money available to deliver health care.

Although I've made this about the NHS this applies to other business that have outsourced parts of their business that are essential.  While I don't admire him Rupert Murdock brings everything that is core inside. In the UK Sky have built and operate their own satellite earth stations. Not core to producing a TV Channel, (otherwise everyone would have one) but without it no TV and Rupert has learnt that you can't be held to ransom from the print unions and others. He even owns TV content producers like 20th Century Fox, so he can run the supply chain end to end without anyone else.