Is Coeliac bread on prescription the same as gluten free bread for sale at the supermarket? I was under the impression they are different in terms of ingredients and fortification/enrichment.

Also to save money lots of NHS trusts have limited the coeliac foods available on prescription. In South Oxfordshire where I live only 8 units a month and only bread and flour is available on prescription. Giving vouchers to use on any free-from foods, pasta, pizza, biscuits, cakes, breakfast cereal, etc. Might increase cost.

Getting involved with pointless wars.

Aren't photographers self-employed and sports centres contracted out to private companies? So they are providing a service to the council in order to make a profit for themselves. Unfortunately that's the way the public likes it - they (you) vote for lower taxes not better services.

Breeding.

That should be massively discouraged and heavily taxed. Kids generate very little money before they're 18; Can be costing the country from before their inception; bump up health costs; and are responsible for most of the education system costs

Far better to just bring in economic migrants and keep breeding to a wealthy elite who can afford to pay say a down payment of £500,000 per child

Well I havent seen the calculations, but, in Australia, all government handouts are means tested
There are 2 tests - an income test and an assets test
Data for the calculation is derived by the tax office from peoples annual tax returns

You only have to do it once, then its applied to all benefits from health care to pensions to unemployment benefit etc.

It gets people out of the idea that they can rely on the government for their day to day living costs.

That would be the fastest way to run down the infrastructure of this country
It suffered from decades of underinvestment by sucessive governments when it was nationalised.

Is there such a widespread "idea" then? I think you're inventing a problem where there really isn't much of one.

Most not all. There are a few exemption. For example if you are working age blind and claiming Disability support pension without rent assistance your exempt from means testing on income.

Not paying child benefits or state pensions to people who are fortunate enough not to need it is definitely a way of saving money.

As state pension is contributions based I would regard not paying it as theft.

As would I.

That's ok we'll pay your pension and child benefit (even though you don't need it)....the contributions from reasonable,unselfish people who don't need it will be more than enough to make a difference .....

It also doesn't necessarily work. Our railways are the worst of both worlds, with a privately run passenger train operation and a publicly owned infrastructure company.

The passenger train operators have no real reason to invest (and perhaps no basis to do so, given that they only have a few years to make it back), and Network Rail is basically run by the politicians. Infrastructure is only built when the politicians think it will buy a few votes, not based on need or long term requirement.

Trivial savings. The odd million doesn't buy anything significant - its a matter of tens of billions of tax revenue lost, and massively increasing demand for some spending, outsripping growth.

The reality is that an aging population is growing every year , and NHS demand grows, largely as a consequence, by 4 % more, in real terms, every year, which is about 5 billion. Pensions also rise by 2.5% a year, and allowing for extra pensioners, their cost have gone up by about 5% a year.

Meanwhile, because of the 2008 recession, government income fell, or didn't grow, for over 6 years. That means pensions took over 25% more from a declining , or not growing, pot after 6 years. And NHS demand since 2008 has gone up by over 30% - while GNP didn't grow hardly at all, and NHS spending only rose by 1% a year or less.

if spending on two big sectors , and the benefits bill, continue to rise - while the economy and tax take falls, or doesn't rise as much , its inevitable spending will have to fall savagely on everything else.

And if the economy grows by 1% , There's no possible way to meet NHS demand growing at 4%, or pensions rising at 2.5% You can't tax more - without losing tax take, employment and investment, you can't grow the economy at 4%., and only chilidish politcians believe in free money trees.

Ironically, the people voting Leave, to complain about poor services, have now made their lives worse, by reducing future growth .

Nothing other than more cuts, and/or higher growth, meets the gap between demand for , and supply of money . Most departments are cut below the bone already. Trident would fund less than one year's increased demand on the NHS, and not refurbishing Parliament would pay for less than a third of ome year's annual pension rise.

It is the same products - as sold in supermarkets - but obviously dealing through phramacies that have no distribution system for food - the shpping costs are huge.

Going through a supermarket's distribution costs pence.

By the time those 8 units get to a pharmacy tens of pounds will have been added to the cost. Collecting via supermarket pharmacy - off the shop floor - costs a lot less to the NHS for example.

By trying to stop "fraud" by people using vouchers for slightly incorrect items - you massively increase the costs - and cost many times more than could been defrauded in the first place

The defence procurement budget is woefully underfunded. it can't even sustain cuirrent force levels - an Army with less firepower than Sweden or Finland's, fewer combat ships than Italy or France, and an airforce no bigger than Australia's, and a third the size of israel's. .

Much of its problem is buying home grown weapons, and then slowing, and cutting, the orders so there's zero economies of scale . The procurement budget seems to be the last thing to be provided for, and the first thing to be cut . If we actually built what we planned to , we would have top 5 armed forces - as it is, we are increasingly inconsequential.

The F35 is all there is until the 2030s, and that will cost far more. You can't fly in modern airdefences without its capabilities , or fly 50 year old fighters. . Defence doesn't come on the cheap amy more.

But what if that hadn't happened? What a difference that would have made!

Corruption
Corporate Tax Dodgers
Civil Servants who are incompetent
Defence Spending
Royal Family
Foreign Aid

True, we will have a navy with one, maybe even two, hulking great carriers with just a handful of fiendishly expensive and highly fallible US jets. Those carriers will demand regular very expensive upgrades and have already been committed by Michael Fallon for use by the US Marine Corps. Probably the most expensive airfields we've ever built, but highly vulnerable. So much so that the rest of our navy will have to be used as carrier support vessels to these grandstanding paper tigers for Mrs May to pose on. And the rest of our forces? Don't worry, we have more military top brass than actual tanks or planes, so we can fight our future wars with squadrons of stiffly-trousered, scrambled egg-laden blimps and donkeys doing the dirty work. If only it were so!

So how much do you think it costs the NHS per coeliac per week and how much money worth of vouchers would you give coeliacs?

If you allowed say 2 loaves per week per coeliac, they could buy them for £5.

Those 2 loaves could cost up to £25 if ordered on prescription and delivered by maybe 2 distributors and into a pharmacy.

They would also have to be gas-flushed "long life" bread as pharmacies cannot handle products with a short shelf life.

A coeliac could have fresher bread a couple of times a week for maybe 1/5 of the cost.

I am sure this could be repeated across the NHS / Defence/ Care sector etc.

It is the middlemen who add on the cost without adding any value that need to be got rid of.

They're already slicing away at it and, looking at the rhetoric from the Tories & newspapers like The Express, they will use the divide and conquer rule to point out how lucky pensioners are in austerity Britain to make further cuts to pensions.

From the above you estimate the NHS is spending up to £25 per week on prescription food per coeliac. That is up to over £1,300 a year on prescription food per coeliac

The NHS is only spending an average of £180 per year on prescription coeliac food per coeliac. That is less than £3.50 a week on prescription food per coeliac.

While in part the massive difference between your guesstimate and NHS spending will be due to many coeliacs not bothering to get food on prescription, I think your five times more expensive via prescription vs via supermarket is also too high.

Yet a few posts up, someone else was suggesting civil servants are their idea of the country's biggest waste of money. Opinions, er?

Yet public spending on sickness, disability and occupational injury in Australia at 2.6% of GDP is significantly higher than the UK at 2% of GDP according to the most up to date OECD statistics (2013). I find it sad that some people still want to prioritise hitting disabled people, who have already been hit much harder than other groups. With significant further cuts to be taken into account in future statistical tables, the UK already spends less, as a percentage of GDP, than the OECD average, putting us 19th of 33 countries. There are lots of other areas to go after, especially as cuts to disability benefits often simply turn any savings into extra costs to social care and the NHS.