OT ish incandescent bulb ban

[M]

Following up to The Natural Philosopher

I know quite a lot actually. Especially public finance.

[M]

Following up to The Natural Philosopher

I know quite a lot actually. Especially public finance.

(when I point out that a proposed tax regime leaves big gaps in finances due to the omission of any property taxes, inheritance taxes or investment income taxes, leaving the richest free to accumulate even greater riches without any tax burdens even over generations and I get back an answer the includes "Mugabe" I don't take it too seriously) Maybe you intend to extend VAT to inheritance, dividends and land, maybe you don't.

[Owain]

Funny how NHS hospitals are always begging for money for things then.

of 197,000 results for fundraising .nhs.uk

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Inheritance tax raises bugger all cash, and basically means that when e.g. someone dies owning e.g. the Mona Lisa, you have to carefully slice off 40% of it and give it to the government.

It means family heirlooms cant be passed down essentially.

The solution of course has been to incorporate assets in companies. Companies don't die, so there is no inheritance tax.

Investment income tax is of course avoided by going for capital gains instead.

Or again, by incorporating teh private wealth into a company that has little other purse than to pay expenses to its owners to offset investment income.

And of course, pandering to the electorate again, there is no capital gains tax on houses that people live in..well for at least some of the time.

In short the whole mechanism is bent completely for reasons of political expedience.

I say scrap it.

The country needs investment, and the government is historically a rotten investor. The country needs work to be done, and taxing it simply makes it expensive enough to be moved offshore. This making the lower quartile of relatively unskilled people essentially unemployable. They then live on social security. It costs MORE to do that, than subsidize their incomes.

The country needs to consume less, and make more, so take the taxes off the making and put them on the spending.

Its a simple argument between allowing people if you like, to keep enough of the grain to plant next years crop, and not worry so much about dividing this years cake exactly equally, so that next years cake is bigger anyway..capitalism seeks to bake bigger cakes, socialism grabs all the grain to make one big cake, divides it equally, but once its eaten, there nothing left.

Welcome to Browns Britain.

We are all *equally* bankrupt now. The triumph of 'egalitarianism'

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah, you must be the council treasurer who was 'too busy to read the FT' and put all the money into icelandic banks.

[M]

Following up to The Natural Philosopher

as it "rasies nothing" how could that be a problem, you missed council tax in your rant BTW.

[M]

Following up to The Natural Philosopher

I do read the FT, as the credit rating agencies didnt downrate Iceland till the last minute and everybody was caught out, not just councils. So thats just a bit of convenient 20/20 hindsight.

[M]

Following up to The Natural Philosopher

i wont bother to read further.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its when you go to the NHS hospitals and find that 5 bureacrats need to have one doctors signature on a piece of paper before they will let you go, having spent a fortune on establishing beyond reasonable doubt what the GP told you, that it wasn't that serious, but wasnt that traatable either, that my blood starts to boil.

Its when you find a man obviously not particualrly in command of his faculties stark maked trailing a drip wandering down the ward, whilst the five receptionists and the nurses look at one another, and try and work out whose actual responsibility it is to get him a bedpan so that he doesn't need to.

Its when someone goes into hospital with a cystitis problem, and comes out after having unsterile cameras poked up his prick, and ends up on antibiotics and a catheter and bag for 4 weeks, and they tell him 'we cant find anything wrong'

The ONL sense Ive had recently was when they told me 'your mother is too old, and of such low quality of life that operating to repair her broken arm not only represents a significant danger, but wouldn't actually make her any more mobile since apart from anything else, she is riddled with arthritis'

A good call, because she died 4 months later anyway.

An then we find that since her husband died somewhat to soon the nil rate transferable inheritance tax thing doesn't apply. Despite what the government tells you.

The NHS is a complete waste of public money by and large. Its SO large and SO fettered with rules and paper and targets and checks and balances, that it spends about ten times what it needs to to tell you 'we cant actually do anything'

[Tim S]

M coughed up some electrons that declared:

They wanted to look at fool.co.uk forums.

Those guys were saying Iceland was stinky over 6 months ago.

Cheers

Tim

[Rod]

The NHS has its problems. But for various reasons I have contact with quite a few people in the US. And I am not at all convinced it is any better there! Example: Residents of California are not allowed to get any private lab tests done (e.g. blood or saliva) without going through a doctor (or similar). Even if they try to use an out-of-state service, that company is breaking the law in processing the test and sending the results back. Or people who simply cannot get treated because of lack of insurance (e.g. after losing their job).

I end up questioning not so much the NHS as the whole health industry.

[M]

Following up to Rod

yes, the NHS delivers care much more cheaply and much more widely than the US system, only right wing fanatics think otherwise.

[Dave]

The above is all to often the way things go, but hear my experience of a stay in hospital.

In October, I was diagnosed with having a detached retina on a Thursday night. The diagnosis was done at Preston Hospital and they rang Manchester Royal Eye Hospital for a bed the following morning. I got there to find that the receptionist processed me very quickly. Everyone knew I was coming. I had my own private care nurse who must have had other patients under her wing, general ward nurses who looked after the general day to day work and everyone knew what they were doing. My blood pressure was through the roof with worry about going blind in that eye.

None of the doctors were white, but all spoke perfect English. The specialist came to see me and told me that they would do the repair under a local. The repair involved working inside my eye while I was awake. I didn't really fancy that after having a cataract done under a local, as I didn't think I could stay still enough. Blood pressure was now in the clouds.

I was wheeled down to theater and hooked up for body function monitoring. The doctor took a look at my BP and went away to consult someone higher up than him. He came back and said that he was not prepared to operate, as one of the tiny blood vessels at the back of my eye could burst and make me blind in that eye. Disappointingly, I was wheeled back up to the ward and given tablets to get my BP down.

Next day saw me being wheeled back down to theater and I was given a general The op was successful. I was discharged on the Sunday afternoon.

The post op care was always very good to excellent. I couldn't fault any part of my treatment at all.

Dave

[Steve]

Mike's a troll.

Although he's usually trolling the food group (uk.food+drink.misc) where his troll posts mainly consist of how great Spain and Spanish food is and that British food is terrible.

He's best plonked or ignored.

[Mark]

You're not in receipt of any savings interest, share dividends, pensions, benefits, grants, wages?

[Mark]

The person lending the 5 million quid will expect more than the original sum back, otherwise they would not loan it. Therefore the majority of the benefit does not help the "other people".

[Man at B&Q]

The 5m is used to gainfully employ people to produce something or provide services that others want. It pays their wages amongst other things. The profit on the products or services repays the 5m + interest. How is that not helping "the other people"?

MBQ

[John Rumm]

Why when someone criticises the NHS does someone immediately jump in with the response that the US system is no better? Its not as the two represent the *only* two ways of providing healthcare, or just because you think one has major problems that it must automatically infer that you are suggesting, supporting, or advocating a switch to the "other".

[Rod]

TNP had suggested that the NHS is a complete waste of money.

I simply wanted to highlight that at least one other system has many, many problems and might even be worse.

I could have considered various aspects of the systems in Canada, France, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, India and Korea - all of which I have had contact about. But my (secondhand) experience of the US is much greater than for any of these other countries.

I actually believe that far too much of the entire health care industry does not do what it tries to claim. There is an obsession with 'saving a life' (maybe just keeping someone alive for a few hours or days) as against quality of life, often over many years.

[John Rumm]

I often found that with subjects like maths at O level - there were some topics that were covered - but only in a half arsed way, so that you never had the full story and hence could think of a practical use for the skill.

(Matrices were one example - at O level they teach you to add, subtract, and multiply them, but then are at a loss to give you a practical application. Its only at a higher level you see a number of applications)

Can be true right through to university as well. More to the point its entirely possible that each student in the class will end up needing a different 10% from the others.