Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
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Just throwing in more and more money never helps, all it does is encourage contract holders and "preferred suppliers" to ramp up prices.
There are better ways to improve the value for money we get from our hard working and much appreciated NHS staff than just throwing larger and larger budgets at them.
So the only way to pay for it is to tax more, there is no alternative. If any sane person went into a local branch of Wilkinson's and a paint brush cost £100 you would, quite rightly, think its a typo or someone in the store is blooming insane. A government funded body however would just pay it.
So you up that bodys budget and low and behold a paintbrush now costs £180. I have seen it both in the RAF and with my current employer, and my wife sees it with the NHS, its madness.
We cannot possibly meet all the things which will be demanded.
Everything you write about the need to fight waste and that more money on its own will not solve the problem is absolutely correct.
But I think we need to both increase resources and use those resources better so that we can meet as much of the increased demand as is reasonably practical. And have the honesty to admit that even this huge investment of new cash will not provide everything that everyone wants even if we manage to spend the money more efficiently.