Well, they created the untenable statelet, they can only blame themselves when the bills start to roll in.
Again. They won’t throw money at NI again because they don’t need the DUP votes in parliament.
“Throw money” == Sufficiently fund
They have refused for years to actually provided the necessary levels of investment and funding in NI to support it at a base level, constantly shouting about how there’s more spent here than in England per capita.
The fact is though the only reason England’s per capita expenditure is so low compared to NI is it’s got more cities which drive down the per capita figure.
Case in point: For a similarly sized region of Manchester and Liverpool together in NI (specifically the Northern Trust area of the HSC), you can easily see the difference.
​
||Northern Trust|Manchester and Liverpool|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Population|479,000|1,050,000 (Liverpool: 496,784, Manchester: 553,230)|
|Number of A&E departments|2|~10 (Liverpool: 4, Manchester: 6)|
|Number of people per A&E|239,500|105,000|
|Number of maternity wards|1|14 (Liverpool: 5 Maternity services within 15 miles of city, Manchester: 9 Maternity services within 15 miles of city)|
|Number of people per maternity ward|479,000|75,000|
The Northern Trust has literally 6.39x as many people per maternity unit. And we’re expected to believe that they have been distributing resources fairly and that our problem is we just haven’t “centralised” enough?
And this trend just continues.
We spend less per capita on education that anywhere in the UK, yet get the best results, and somehow we spend too much according to the government because of this mystical “double spend” on multiple sectors (which is always presented like the education system isn’t literally set up to fund on a per child basis so if there are 1000 children, there will always need to be 1000 children’s worth of funding provided).
We have the worst infrastructure in the UK (including roads, trains, water, electricity) with threats of power cuts this winter because of the fact we haven’t invested in new power stations, and threats of street lights being turned of this winter because they can’t be afforded. We also have some of the worst road accident stats in Europe. Trains never run on time on the like 4 routes they do run on, and so on.
Our police and prison service is severely underfunded to the point we have several hundred more prisoners in the service than it was built for and the police service has lost 400 officers in the last 12 months it can’t replace due to a funding shortfall of over £100 million.
And on, and on, and on it goes.
The problem isn’t that they are “throwing money” at the north. The problem is they DON’T sufficiently fund the north to the level that England or anywhere else is funded.
It’s insane that they keep demanding as well that NI make more and more cuts. Like it’s getting to the point that there won’t be anything left to cut.
3 comments
Well, they created the untenable statelet, they can only blame themselves when the bills start to roll in.
Again. They won’t throw money at NI again because they don’t need the DUP votes in parliament.
“Throw money” == Sufficiently fund
They have refused for years to actually provided the necessary levels of investment and funding in NI to support it at a base level, constantly shouting about how there’s more spent here than in England per capita.
The fact is though the only reason England’s per capita expenditure is so low compared to NI is it’s got more cities which drive down the per capita figure.
Case in point: For a similarly sized region of Manchester and Liverpool together in NI (specifically the Northern Trust area of the HSC), you can easily see the difference.
​
||Northern Trust|Manchester and Liverpool|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Population|479,000|1,050,000 (Liverpool: 496,784, Manchester: 553,230)|
|Number of A&E departments|2|~10 (Liverpool: 4, Manchester: 6)|
|Number of people per A&E|239,500|105,000|
|Number of maternity wards|1|14 (Liverpool: 5 Maternity services within 15 miles of city, Manchester: 9 Maternity services within 15 miles of city)|
|Number of people per maternity ward|479,000|75,000|
The Northern Trust has literally 6.39x as many people per maternity unit. And we’re expected to believe that they have been distributing resources fairly and that our problem is we just haven’t “centralised” enough?
And this trend just continues.
We spend less per capita on education that anywhere in the UK, yet get the best results, and somehow we spend too much according to the government because of this mystical “double spend” on multiple sectors (which is always presented like the education system isn’t literally set up to fund on a per child basis so if there are 1000 children, there will always need to be 1000 children’s worth of funding provided).
We have the worst infrastructure in the UK (including roads, trains, water, electricity) with threats of power cuts this winter because of the fact we haven’t invested in new power stations, and threats of street lights being turned of this winter because they can’t be afforded. We also have some of the worst road accident stats in Europe. Trains never run on time on the like 4 routes they do run on, and so on.
Our police and prison service is severely underfunded to the point we have several hundred more prisoners in the service than it was built for and the police service has lost 400 officers in the last 12 months it can’t replace due to a funding shortfall of over £100 million.
And on, and on, and on it goes.
The problem isn’t that they are “throwing money” at the north. The problem is they DON’T sufficiently fund the north to the level that England or anywhere else is funded.
It’s insane that they keep demanding as well that NI make more and more cuts. Like it’s getting to the point that there won’t be anything left to cut.