Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
I am in London at present where the chief concerns are Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee next week, Deputy Prime Minister Clegg's proposal to improve "social mobility," and the incomparable national competitive advantage conferred by Britain's National Health Service.
I normally pay almost no attention to the British royal family. However, on the matter of the Diamond Jubilee I claim personal privilege. My late father, as a young member of the Marine Corps Band, played for the new British monarch on the occasion of her 1957 state visit with President Eisenhower. The fact that the Queen is about to celebrate sixty years on the throne is remarkable, and for me a poignant reminder of the passage of time.
Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, the junior partner in Conservative David Cameron's coalition government, is promoting what one wag terms a "Clegg up" for Britain's disadvantaged. Clegg decries the poor relative performance of state school graduates competing with private school students for admission to top universities. His solution reads as if lifted from the Obama playbook: lower university entry requirements for state school graduates. Why focus on improving actual education delivered by state schools when it is simpler to order up the elite credential sufficient for a lifetime of lucrative government employment?
Meanwhile, a local budget expert, speaking off-the-record over the traditional English breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon and tomato, told me that the Government's latest budget is a disaster. Proposed tax cuts seem calculated to stir up maximal opposition while remaining too timid to revive the stalling economy. Reforms targeting business are pitched toward large corporations, with little on offer for unlawyered small enterprises. Hopefully, someone on Mitt Romney's campaign staff will pay attention and keep him from falling into a similar trap of endorsing too-clever-by-half tax reform.
Finally, this morning at the House of Lords I listened to a bipartisan assemblage of the Great and Good discussing the latest triumph of Britain's National Health Service: a new national database guaranteed to improve clinical trial efficiencies. Five minutes before the end of the program, after a solid hour of self-congratulatory commentary, the British founder of one of the world's largest clinical research organizations reported that, notwithstanding this latest achievement of centralized decision making, his company would continue to employ three times as many people in Poland as in the UK, since the NHS's 1.4 million-strong bureaucracy efficiently strangles timely clinical trial completion, no matter how comprehensive the computer system. The comment, seemingly calculated to stir debate, sank without a trace into the swirling sunlit waters of the Thames.
ObamaCare delenda est.
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
George Savage
Clegg decries the poor relative performance of state school graduates competing with private school students for admission to top universities. His solution reads as if lifted from the Obama playbook: lower university entry requirements for state school graduates. Why focus on improving actual education delivered by state schools when it is simpler to order up the elite credential sufficient for a lifetime of lucrative government employment?
The next step, when the students thus promoted fail to thrive will be to lower the graduation requirements from the elite schools.
Why not skip a few steps and just give everyone a degree? You'd be able to save all that money on buildings and books and teachers.
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
You missed your calling, George. You should've been a foreign correspondent.
Gorgeous.
Mar '11
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
It never ceases to amaze me how much filth politicians are willing to crawl through to get their bums on the treasury benches but David Cameron deserves a prize. If he had no intention to improve things it would have been better to let Labour take the credit.
Oct '10
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
UK – National Health Service – 1,430,000 personnel
China – active duty military – 1,250,000 personnel
US – active duty military – 1,220,000 personnel
UK – active duty military – declining from about 175,000 in 2010 to 158,000 by 2015
Apr '12
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
As a Venture Capitalist, George, I wondered if you asked about how much VC investment is put into early stage medical devices and products? Has the Government run and tax payer funded health care system impacted early stage development of medical devices and medicine?
HVTs: UK – National Health Service – 1,430,000 personnel
China – active duty military – 1,250,000 personnel
US – active duty military – 1,220,000 personnel
UK – active duty military – declining from about 175,000 in 2010 to 158,000 by 2015 · 1 hour ago
Astounding. The UK's health system is in the 10 largest corporations in the world, along with Walmart and Sumsung. The movie The Exotic Marigold Hotel is a very depressing window into health care delivery in the UK.
Apr '11
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
HVTs: UK – National Health Service – 1,430,000 personnel
China – active duty military – 1,250,000 personnel
US – active duty military – 1,220,000 personnel
UK – active duty military – declining from about 175,000 in 2010 to 158,000 by 2015 · 3 hours ago
The war on ill health.
Jul '10
Re: Random Thoughts from Across the Pond
Let's see. Great Britian's population is roughly 60 million. Considering that the US population is about 312 million, what does that bode for us, bureacracy-wise? I fear the estimates for the new bureaucracies associated with O Care are about as understated as the cost estimates.