Talk:Welfare state in the United Kingdom

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I am worried that the pie chart representing welfare expenditure has the potential to be misleading, and could therefore benefit from editing. This is particularly important due to the sensitive political nature of the topic concerned. The pie chart is found under the sub-heading 'Expenditure' and is titled: 'UK Government Welfare Expenditure 2011-12'. The issue with it is that, contrary to many other pie charts (including others on this page), it represents total spending as one of the sections on the pie chart itself; also the colour used to identify this section on the key to the right is very similar to the colour used to illustrate the pie chart section on 'employment and support allowance'. My concern is therefore that it is very easy to inaccurately read the graph as showing that employment and support allowance makes up half of government welfare spending, when in fact it is a much smaller proportion. I suggest that it would be clearer to remove the section of the pie graph showing total expenditure and instead show this information by writing it underneath the other entries in the key as: 'Total expenditure = £160.2 bn'. If someone could enact this edit I would be very grateful as I do not know how to. Thank you. --Matpb (talk) 13:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have replaced the chart with a Pie Chart template. Unfortunately it only permits 10 segments, so I also amended "Others" in the table, so not to be confused with "Other" in the Pie Chart. Ajcoxuk (talk) 10:48, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Morning all. I can't help but feel this article is kinda poor quality, and needs a little brushing up. Sincerely,

The Queen

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.98.91.167 (talk) 10:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering if it might make sense to change the name of the article to something like Welfare State of the United Kingdom to help make it clear that this is what the article deals with, also I suspect that many people looking for information on the welfare state in the UK would use a similar search term. 150.237.85.229 (talk) 21:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article says "most people get free medical prescriptions and treatment", but surely everybody gets free hospital treatment? Wouldnt it be more accurate to say something like "people pay a small fixed prescription charge which is free for those with low incomes. Hospital treatment is free regardless of income." Thanks. Fred (UK citizen and NHS user).

If nobody objects in the next few days I will change the article as above. Thanks. Fred.

In the first line it states;

"which identified five "Giant Elvis" in society"

Is giant "elvis" a typing error, or is that genuinely what it said on the report? --92.19.110.189 (talk) 12:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]