Infrastructure

From the BBC

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland ahead of her speech to the Constitution Unit research centre at University College London, Ms Sturgeon said the SNP would support a "modest" increase in public spending of about 0.5% in real terms.

She said: "Debt and deficit would still be falling as a percentage of GDP over these years but we would free up something in the region of £180bn over the UK to invest in infrastructure, in innovation, in growing the economy."

I don't think this country really needs any more infrastructure. Our problems with health aren't with a lack of hospitals, or even beds to patients to sleep in, it's the money for, and management of drugs, nurses and doctors, and that's mostly just spending. You could maybe count investment in health if people can't work because of illness, but in general, it's the old people who consume the health bill, not working people, and that's not going to pay off (which doesn't mean it isn't spending we shouldn't do, but it's not money-making investment).

We've got clean water, pretty good roads (and the potholes could be fixed for down-the-back-of-the-governments-sofa-money), billions being spent each year improving rail. School buildings seem to be pretty good. Electricity and drainage seems to work. We could do with more reservoirs, but the problem there isn't money, it's NIMBYs blocking development. Broadband speeds are getting faster to the point where most people are satisfied. There's a falling demand for libraries, plenty of lottery-funded sports centres around the place.

I'm not saying there aren't places we could spend more money, and some of that would even count as an investment, but I'm struggling to think of any infrastructure that we need to spend more money on. Anyone?
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MW adds, PC156 has gone off piste a bit: "Whilst you say that in general health spending is consumed by old people this doesn't appear to be born out by the data."

From the FT: "NHS England’s calculations break down how much the NHS spends on patients across 18 age categories. These show that those aged 60 to 64 cost the NHS twice as much as those aged 40 to 44, while those aged 85 and above cost about 10 times as much."

At least one-third of NHS spending is on people over retirement age, that much seems uncontroversial. I vaguely remember reading that it was half, but maybe that includes non-NHS 'social care' costs and subsidies for long term care?

Floods

From the Independent

Britain may have to choose whether it wants to save "town or country" from future flooding because it is too costly to defend both, the chairman of the Environment Agency said.

Lord Smith said "difficult choices" would have to be made over what to protect because "there is no bottomless purse" to pay for defences.

His warning comes as it emerged victims of the flooding are having to pay up to 41p a minute to call a government helpline for advice.

From John Redwood's Diary

The staff costs of the Agency rose by £30m or 8% compared to the previous year, reaching a total of £395.3 million. The Agency employed 12,252 people including  temps and contractor personnel.  Pension contributions cost £56 m , with a loss on the fund recognised that year in the accounts bringing the total pension cost to £197.4 million.  The total cost of pensions was almost as high as the capital works, where they spent £219million during the year.

Within the capital works just £20.3 million was spent on improving or maintaining culverts and channels to ensure free flow of water. That is a mere 1.7% of their total budget, or 3.4% of their staff and pension costs. A further £69.6m was spent on improving embankments.