Broadband for all - not political

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Really? Are you saying you can't get totally private health treatment if you want it?

Have you got a choice who supplies your water? A real choice which train operator you would like to use?

Perhaps you think the energy supply system perfect. With companies ceasing trading every other day. And being bailed out by the rest of us.

Even with shopping, much of the real choice that once was has been wiped out by the giants.

Not to say there aren't some things that are improved by competition. Telecoms being the obvious one. But rather difficult to have a genuine choice of local hospitals.

[bert]

In article [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

Certainly wouldn't if it was nationalised.

Their customers may be bailed out but the energy supply companies aren't

You do have a choice of hospitals.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That really answers the point. Are you BoJo in disguise?

And just who do you think pays for that? A magic money tree?

All local?

[Andrew]

the NHS has never BUILT anything !!!. It was all done by private construction companies, whether directly for the NHS or via a PFI contract.

You won't find any japanese or korean equipment in the NHS. Full Stop. Almost all the really fantastic hitech analyser stuff is American.

All the computer kit, Lab software and patient admin systems are American.

ALL of the blood collection system used by the Transfusion Centres for collecting, processing and distributing blood and its products is of USA origin. All of the syringe system used for taking blood are American. There are special areas where certain countries dominate, most blood gas analysers tend to be Radiometer (copenhagen). Finland has a thriving medical and scientific analytical business but nothing like as big as the USA.

Any European makers are simply latching on to the expired American patents, like the Coulter principle for example.

[Andrew]

'Free' at the point of use in an ageing society with millions of baby boomers joining the retirement party, is economically impossible.

The debt mountain is 20 years time as the baby boomers start needing expensive 'repairs' was forecast to horrendous even before Corbyn and the Militant Tendancy took over the Labour party.

[Andrew]

Not if Chairman Corbyn has any say. Ditto private schools.

I can choose between Southern, SWT, or Thameslink trains if I want to travel to London. I can choose between Southern, or GWR if I want to head to Wales. As the name suggests, regulated fares like season tickets are - regulated. But Cahirman Corbyn is going to cut them by 30%. This means all those BBC staff earning well over £50K in Central London (lots of them), thousands of very highly paid NHS staff, oddles of bankers will get a subsidised season ticket while someone living in the sticks with no access to any sort of train service is going to have ever more crmbling roads to use (lost more of these). So much for 'for the many not the few'. And how many under 16's pay anyway, if there is any chance of not bothering ??.

I can have a water meter installed and decide how much I use.

Lidl and Aldi shoppers are apparently quite happy with the much limited choice of goods on sale (compared to a big tesco or Waitrose).

You CAN choose which hospital to go to for certain procedures.

[Andrew]

No-one is bailed out at all. The customers are just moved to a bigger supplier. Apart from losing the discounts that they GREEDILY took in the first place (and the REASON why the minnow enrgy co.failed), no-one loses. Maybe some climate change bullshit money was never handed over, but that is it.

McDonnell is going to plant a money FOREST anyway.

[Andrew]

The NHS was restructured in 1974 into 13 Regional Health Authorities, each with a Blood transfusion Centre, plus a number of Area Health Authorities, each with 2 or 3 health districts, with no more than one large hospital per distict. It worked well for 25 years, until

2001 when Blair and Co gave it the biggest EVER, FULL, top-down, massive reorg it has ever had. Another 400,000 people joined the payroll and the totally unfunded pension scheme. The number of consulants trebled between 1995 and 2004, and like GPs were given huge payrises taking their incomes up to well over £100K, plus secret merit awards for consultants (just like bankers bonuses). The annual budget went from about £38 Billion to over £115 billion.

Billions of pounds were pissed up the wall on the most lavish computer system in use anywhere in the world, before it was canned.

[Roger Hayter]

That was a paper exercise. 80% of the NHS consultant work was done by doctors (mainly but not exclusively foreign trained) forced to remain in "training" for 20 or 30 years. This was unsustainable for many reasons, not least that doctors' pay had fallen dramatically compared with average wages over the preceding decades.

GPs are nominally self-employed and pay something like 30% pension contibutions out of this. And this level of pay only applied if they worked 80+ hours a week or used some of this income to employ salaried or locum doctors.

Distributed in a thoroughly corrupt way to those whose faces fitted. But this did *not* start with Blair, it had been going since the 50s (or possibly 60s).

On a technical point, the spending was certainly lavish, but I don't think computer systems which never actually worked could be described as lavish *systems*.

[whisky-dave]

Why do you need to have to chose and what criterai do you use to make your decision ?

Peole live in the sticks because they want to. People in the sticks get a whole house for the price of 1 studio london flat.

Not sure what that means.

So have you, will yuo pay for the installation. And you don't need a water meter in order to decide how much water you use.

I am for the things I get there, but for me I can work out that if Lidl and Aldi don't stock what I want I have the choice to go elsewhere, perhaps some people can't work that out.

In theory.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Lots in my local hospital badged Philips. The spelling of the (originally) Dutch electronics firm.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Bollocks. If that is impossible, so is private health care. Or growing enough food. And so on.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Crikey. And I thought you believed in competition.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Right - you can choose your train service from where you live. But then rant on about there being no service at all to others?

Which is exactly what happens when profit is the only reason for a service. Was most noticeable when bus services were deregulated.

[bert]

In article [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

Patient transport if needed.

[bert]

In article [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

So it's a rant to pint out that cutting train fares by 1/3rd only benefits those who use trains - about 40%.

Cost effectiveness. Many services outside metropolitan areas are subsidised by the local council because they are not commercially viable. Financial pressure on councils has forced them to reduce these subsidies. If they received the same level of grant as London and other metropolitan areas they would be able to run more services.

[Andrew]

This wasn't competition though. It relied on the UK publics love of freeloading and getting something for nothing (like the NHS).

If they had looked at the business model they would have realised that all it needed was a nasty cold spell like the beast from the east and that minnow energy supplier was toast (having signed up customers on 'cheap' deals, and then had to buy the energy at 10 times what the customer was paying when *world* energy prices, or freak weather went against their bets).

[Andrew]

Economic fact 101. Do the maths.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You now in favour of grants for unprofitable public services, then? At least that's a start.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

From the Trump school of facts?

Just love the way some things are deemed economically impossible. Just like going to the moon.