Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

sticky - survey for the TUC rather diminishes the credibility of the result .... imagine how TUC would have reacted had the survey concluded that the austerity measures were exactly what the country needed!

that said, it comes as no surprise that the overall feeling (forget the %) is that living standards are not improving ..... it is inevitable that this aspect will lag behind industrial (economic) recovery

honours list
i'm wrily amused that there has been no rant from the usual suspects about those so honoured and the elitist air surrounding them

Cyners what on earth are you talking about ?, its a YOUGOV poll.

The TUC have commented on it.

Obviously the Tories darent go near it.

unequivocally the survey was instructed and sponsored by TUC - it states so in black and white (well black anyway) - so my observation remains valid

Of course people don't see any improvement in their living standards. That follows improvements in living standards. You have to wait till later in 2014.

The awkward truth about funding the NHS

It doesn’t bode well if we can’t even charge foreign visitors when they go to see our GPs


By Philip Johnston

7:46PM GMT 30 Dec 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10542622/The-awkward-truth-about-funding-the-NHS.html



For the first time, foreign visitors using A&E services are to be charged for doing so – but they will still be able to visit GPs’ surgeries for nothing. This is, apparently, a bold political decision. But why do we consider it so contentious to ask people who have made little or no contribution to general taxation to pay to use the NHS? It isn’t controversial in any other country. Only in the UK, where we are wedded to the notion of health care free at the point of delivery, is this such a toxic issue.


Yet the truth – although you will not hear many politicians say it – is that this concept was watered down long ago, with the introduction of prescription and dental charges. Moreover, foreign visitors (apart from those from the EU, where there are reciprocal arrangements) are meant to be charged in advance for hospital treatments. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that many are never pursued for the costs – but why on earth not, since most of them will have travel insurance (or ought to have as a condition of entry)?


In fact, the Government should not have stopped at A&E consultation fees. Ministers should have gone the whole hog, and charged foreigners for GP visits, too. The reason they haven’t is that they do not want to open up the much bigger question: should we all start to pay to see the doctor in his surgery or when we go to hospital with a broken ankle?


It is at this point that many people have an apoplexy. Haven’t we already paid through our taxes and National Insurance? It is one thing to ask foreigners to cough up; but why should those of us who live here and hand over a third or more of our income to the Treasury have to make a further contribution?


We are, in other words, still in thrall to the founding principle of the NHS as an almost entirely taxpayer-funded service for which no one is charged when they use it. But while this may have seemed magnificently enlightened in 1948, it is unrealistic today. It has also made a sensible debate about the future of the NHS impossible.


Yesterday, Earl Howe, the health minister, made the now ritualistic genuflection before the great NHS totem when he announced the new charging plan, whose details have yet to be worked out. “Having a universal health service free at the point of use rightly makes us the envy of the world,” he said. “But we must make sure the system is fair to the hard-working British taxpayers who fund it.”

While the “envy of the world” mantra might have been true once, it isn’t any longer. Yet we cleave to a sepia-tinted image of the NHS that should have been dispelled long ago – certainly by recent tales of sub-standard geriatric care and the ongoing crisis in out-of-hours provision.

One of the fundamental assumptions that underpinned the introduction of universal care in the Forties was that demand for medical treatment would diminish as the nation’s health improved. In fact, the opposite has happened. Increasing life expectancy means more people live to an age where they contract diseases that are expensive to treat. We are also less predisposed to queueing and rationing than we used to be.

In a consumerist age, people compare their health care with other services, and expect to have the same choice and speed of delivery. Or at least they compare it in every way but one – the cost.

Many people believe they pay for their medical bills through their National Insurance contributions. But this is not the case, even though revenues from the additional one per cent on NICs introduced by Labour 10 years ago do go to the NHS. The bulk of the money comes from general taxation – and while annual expenditure has almost doubled since 1999, we still spend less than in France or Germany, where mixed funding systems harness the strengths of public and private sectors.

If we want to keep pace, we will either have to pay more in taxes, or find the cash elsewhere – because while the NHS may be free at the point of service, it isn’t free full stop. A report earlier this year from the King’s Fund, the health think tank, predicted that if NHS spending grows at the same rate as over the past half-century, it will take up 20 per cent of GDP by 2050. In reality, it will grow even faster than that. A bigger population (in every way) means more people will be using the NHS – and they will all consider they are entitled to expensive treatments, most of which haven’t even been invented yet. These will have to be paid for.

Yet while we have had a succession of structural reforms and efficiency drives in recent years, the basic question of how the NHS should be funded has become a political no-go area. Relying on the economic recovery to provide the revenues is misguided: an ageing population means there are fewer taxpayers as a proportion of the total, and a majority now take more out of the system than they put in.

Given these realities, some form of charging is inevitable. Yet even to hint at this is to risk ostracism. When the think tank Reform made some relatively modest proposals for NHS fees a few weeks ago, there was a furious response from people who otherwise have no answer to the problems coming down the track.

Reform’s report pointed out that most OECD countries require their own nationals to pay for basic GP visits or even for elements of secondary care, backed by personal insurance. If we won’t even make foreign visitors pay to visit the GP, then we have serious trouble ahead.

Dave Camoron ‏@EtonOldBoys 4m
Heathrow Airport is full of Brits flying out to Romania and Bulgaria to start new lives with better prospects and pay, than in the UK

Cyners OK YOUGOV have been asked to survey certain questions but the TUC dont chose the pollsters neither do YOUGOV fiddle the books like so many organisations affiliated to the tories.

And by the way what is wrong with the questions asked.

Is it the results you are sore with.

probably nothing, and i merely made an observation rather than a major political issue as someone like fossy would have made
you'll note that i also made a supplementary observation re standards of living

by the way, there's no need for you to start making very silly and unsubstantiated political accusations about poll rigging

Dave Camoron ‏@EtonOldBoys 4m
Breaking News Portland......... The Old Mulberry Harbours used last in WWII are full of Brits Escaping the Tories to live in Bulgaria

A man who was allegedly high on meth reportedly fought off more than a dozen police officers while publicly masturbating.

Andrew Frey, 37, apparently made a series of outbursts and then began masturbating in an Oregon restaurant, The Oregonian reports.


Incredibly, police were reportedly unable to subdue Frey with a Taser.

It took 15 officers to finally take him into custody and stop him pleasuring himself.

Frey later reportedly told authorities that he took methamphetamine and couldn’t remember the obscene incident, according to the Marion County Sheriff's office.

Frey was treated at a local hospital and then booked into county jail on charges of public indecency, theft of services, and resisting arrest.

Why haven't we thought of this?


In what appears to be a horrific abuse of some of Japan's most desperate and vulnerable people, homeless men are reportedly being recruited to clean up the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

The destitute are said to be the most likely to accept minimum wage for what is probably one of the most undesirable jobs in the world.

One of the recruiters has explained how he is sourcing potential labourers for the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

The headhunter told Reuters news agency that he supplies homeless people to contractors in the nuclear disaster zone for a reward of less than £100 per head.

Seiji Sasa, explained: "This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," walking past men sleeping on cardboard.

Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan's northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule and reports continue to emerge that the situation is worse than Japan is letting on.

Speaking to The Huffington Post UK , nuclear experts highlighted that no one really knows the true severity of the radioactive water leaks, but that they are "far worse than we truly know."

Reuters reported that in a murky underworld, driven by gangs, one man – photographed by undercover police recruiting homeless men – said: "I don't ask questions; that's not my job."

"I just find people and send them to work. I send them and get money in exchange. That's it. I don't get involved in what happens after that."

In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp's network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project, the special report revealed.

cynic - 31 Dec 2013 12:30 - 34760 of 34761

"by the way, there's no need for you to start making very silly and unsubstantiated political accusations about poll rigging".........ends

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Camoron himself has been up in front of the public accounts committee twice this year for telling lies in party political broadcasts.

Remember how he lied to the Nation and said the government were getting the countrys DEBT down, debt I might add that this coalition as racked up far more in 3 years than labour did in 13 years.

SO please dont come trying to capture the high political moral ground with me.

Anyway its the new year so Im not going to fall out with you and wont even ask you for an apology.

Happy New Year Cyners.

"Haystack - 31 Dec 2013 12:43 - 34763 of 34764

A man who was allegedly high on meth reportedly fought off more than a dozen police officers while publicly masturbating."

Well, doesn't that just about some you up H/S... Any more enlightening insights into your thought process today?

in case you hadn't noticed, i'm trying to avoid taking any (hard) political ground at all .....

nevertheless, as is often found in the big, bad world, the company that commissions the research will expect and nearly always get the desired result ..... and if they don't, then they won't publish :-)

as is often said - lies, damned lies and statistics!

So what are your comments on the CBI who commisioned a similar report on WAGES and found that employers were not paying employees enough. Yesterdays report.

Were they lies dammed lies and statistics. or are you just curb fitting to suit your own agenda.

i've no idea what the CBI report said as i didn't see it, let alone read it
why are you getting so heated?
and having got so heated, are you sure you haven't had a little typo above? :-)


btw, as you seem to have forgotten, my "supplementary" is cc'd again .....
that said, it comes as no surprise that the overall feeling (forget the %) is that living standards are not improving ..... it is inevitable that this aspect will lag behind industrial (economic) recovery


PS - no apology requested :-))

Not inevitable at all, where have you got that tosh from.

Growth can be demand led not supply push, in other words consumer strength and higher standards of living are pushing growth up.

You seem to be a little confused with your economics.

Living standards do certainly not have to lag behind industrial recovery as Osbourne a non economist would have you believe.

Read Keynes.

Anyway Im calling it quits.

I can smell the John Smiths on the air like a March Hare.

Its all around me and Im getting shiffty feet. Crappy Christmas is past thank god, its a new year to savour.

See ya next year grumpy old git........wink.