According to Nick Clegg writing for yesterday’s Evening Standard (5:9:16), the Conservatives discovered the public wanted a 7 day NHS and involved junior doctors to work in it in drawing up such a contract. Other issues affecting the junior doctors is an increasingly older society with a lot of care needed for elderly patients, causing longer hours and needing more personnel. It seems at the moment financial resources for the above are not as readily available as they previously were. The Brexit lobby focused on the “pledge to deliver £350 million a week to NHS” on leaving the EU. This brought votes in. However the strikes are mostly going ahead with junior doctors receiving criticism for the fact that innocent patients are caught in the middle. Clearly the money, the prospects and the schemes for longer and more unsociable working hours are still at the core of disaffection in the NHS.
How does Apple tax tie in? What they have paid or not paid in Ireland has been titled by the European Commission as an illegal form of “state aid”. The money may well end up being paid instead to the US tax authorities so initially seeming not to have an impact on the NHS disputes. However in another way huge questions of national sovereignty and fairness looms. Individual tax payers and any companies who can’t arrange “loopholes” for tax payment are all affected – the share of the total tax take that comes from corporations which comes from corporations have almost halved in the UK since 1989 according to Nick Clegg’s Evening Standard article. The above may affect an increase in tax to everyday taxpayers to help bring revenue into this country whilst loopholes engineered by conglomorates see their taxes going elsewhere.
European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is noted as having made a case striking at the “heart of a deep fault line” examining whether governments should work together with multinationals who relocate from one place to the next in order to defy high taxes and who set the pace and agenda for others to follow suit.
In seeking to take back control with Brexit, Clegg is negative and suggests that we relinquish control of global forces affecting everything from our hospitals and nhs to the crime on our streets. Since more than 50 percent of the British public voted “yes” to Brexit however, we must remain positive and do all we can to make it work for the sake of the UK population and especially its workforce.
Currently Theresa May is working with China on the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor as their country would be a large investor.
Watch this space.