Here goes...
2p on unleaded
3p on diesel
VAT up to 19% - which adds yet more your fuel and your purchase / running costs.
Road Fund licences up 10%.
All "to fund the NHS" which now spends something like 55% of it's revenues on administration.
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Yes, I'm really frightened of the NHS, being at an age when I could fall into their clutches.
It wants a great shake up, preferably privatization, with all the dead wood and the unions slung out, and the professionals left to do their jobs rather than fill up bumf - my wife worked for, then alongside the hospital service.
Just throwing even more money will only make things even worse. But if its OK according to the best thinking in Islington (where they tend to go private!) it will happen.
Nothing worse than an elective dictatorship.
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Unfortunatly the NHS could never survive privatisation. Every cock up would be highlighted by massive publicity blaming profit chasing bosses putting money before lives, just like it was on the railways despite the the fact that the number of deaths during rail travel went DOWN after privatisation.
We are a funny lot in this country, we have for decades accepted our taxes being thrown into a massive black hole while the service gets worse and worse, knowing all the time that the people who run the system don't even use it themselves, as Tommo says.
We get what we deserve, which is power mad politicians bleeding us dry to run public services whose efficiency would be put to shame by any corner shop.
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NHS? I saw an interesting report on a chap who travelled to Capetown SA for his operation. He was seen the same day by a specialist, the operation was carried out the next day. And he lived. He said the hospital was like a hotel.
This bull about raising taxes to fund the NHS is proved a lie by the fact that, according to reports, Miser Brown left £7 billion unspent last year.
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I really think we knock the NHS unfairly. OK, they're not perfect, but who is??
During my stays in hospital 4yrs ago, I can only sing their praises!
[Well done to all at the Bristol Eye Hospital :-)]
During my follow-up appointments in Taunton, the specialists always had time to explain things etc etc and the wards were small and pleasant.
I really think we are lucky to have this service in Blighty, don't knock it!
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Hi "Doc",
Ever wondered why the NHS are reported to kill over 50,000 folks a year by medical accident? But they are called " adverse events", not accidents. Just as dead though
Hardly a murmer from anyone. Indeed, I would bet that most folks do not even know this horrendous figure. Imagine if that number were slaughtered on our roads?
Seen this?
www.guide-information.org.uk/guide/dr_legal.htm
www.wcanews.com/archives/2001/mar/mar1901c.htm
This one shows 11% of patients suffer an adverse event and a third of them die. Others are severely disabled.
www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/June2001/MedErrs...m
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Fair point, Dave, but tell that to my next door neighbour who was phoned up on Tuesday morning and told that the knee replacement he was due to go in for that day had been cancelled because there were no beds. He has been waiting nineteen months to have it done.
As for lucky to have the NHS, would the Germans, French, Aussies or Americans swap their system for ours? And would a government minister use it?
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Dave,
You are confusing the care staff, which you are so nice about, with the remaining 55% of the NHS. These are the ones whoe are the reasons for the problem.
Everything from earning money better spent on a nurse to cocking up every level of admin you can imagine.
In the late 80s, I think it was, I did a job for the Wessex Health Authority and for a couple or the Trusts, one in BRistol.
It is quite incredible how much money they spend on things that are nothing to do with patient care.
M.
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I wasn't knocking the NHS, I'd just like to see more bucks given to care and less to paper shuffling. There are something like 900 monthly returns that hospitals have to provide for the government...
One of my early jobs was with a Regional Health Authority, it was unbelievable the way everything was wasted
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Paperwork and Admin are things which affect all businesses
Some of it is necessary
Most of it isn't....which is a total and utter waste of time & money.
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I really cannot accept that I can get treatment for my dogs one hundred times faster than for myself and family.
E.g. same day appointment, x-rays or scans same day, blood tests with results that evening, surgery the next day.
If that is what privatisation of the NHS would give, then I am all for it.
My daughter waited 18 months for an operation on her knee, in pain , on crutches and in a wheelchair. And that was after 9 months of waiting for consultant appointments.
You might say "But private care is expensiv" but you don't know how much you personally pay for the NHS. Some of it is via NIC, some through income tax, some through VAT, some through fuel duty (Motoring link) etc..
I bet that if those taxes were dropped then you could affort pretty good private care.
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Yes, step forward the 'no blame' tories!
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