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Westward

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Everything posted by Westward

  1. They stopped prescribing the sort meds you can get from Tesco for a few pence several years ago. Round here the surgery seems to have a priority system in place. It seems you get near the top if you're really old or a young child or, like me, being treated for cancer. The surgery will give my D-I-L a next day appointment for our grandson and I can always get an appointment for my hormone implant, but my wife has simply given up trying to see a doctor even though she needs an examination and probably a scan on a damaged ankle. Factor in that the doctors here do 9-5, work from home 2 or 3 days a week and that the surgery is closed on weekends and it's easy to see why people call an ambulance for anything more than a headache.
  2. There's a problem with electrical resistance on one of the battery connectors. This causes the voltage to drop when current is drawn. Starting is a really heavy current drain and the more the current drain the more the voltage drop and that's why the panel lights go dead. Clean the contact area of the battery terminals and the cable clamps with light sandpaper and refit.
  3. No but I am aware of that too many charity CEOs get eye wateringly large salaries. Cancer research, which is really a promotional vehicle for the the pharma industry and is a charity in name only, pay their CEO £240K.
  4. Nuffield is a charity. Surely they help the NHS rather than plunder it.
  5. Aneurin Bevan, always ready to take the credit, merely implemented the parts of the Beveridge Report which related to health. Since Labour continually claim to have invented the NHS it might be worth noting that Beveridge was actually a liberal and the report was commissioned by the coalition government under instructions from Churchill. Beveridge having been Churchill's private secretary early in the 20th century. From it's earliest beginnings, pre WWI, the welfare state was always a liberal concept. This was when the liberals were actually a sensible and electable party and long before they became "Labour Lite". Just about all the Labour Party has ever done for the NHS over the last 70 years is to complain that the conservatives starve it of cash. The NHS needs to be free of government interference and the government needs to be freed from being held responsible for the structural shortcomings in the NHS. Neither of which will happen whilst it remains untouchable.
  6. The NHS wasn't a fully functioning system from day1. It all started the year I was born but when I was 3 my mother spent 18 months in a TB sanitorium in South Mimms. My dad had to work 5 and a half days a week at his main job and 2 evenings at White City dog track in order to pay the bills. Of course no one would do that now, present day people simply assume that it's the government's job to pick up the bills. And that's what would happen for people who couldn't get insurance, much as it is in other civilised countries with working healthcare systems.
  7. The NHS model hasn't been sustainable in the long term for at least 40 years. The idea of cradle to grave care, free at the point of entry, is unique to this country AFAIK. Originally it included free dentistry and free eye care along with illness and injury. Since then many hugely expensive new services such as IVF have been added and the ever increasing expectations from the public and the government as to what the NHS should be providing is dragging it further and further into meltdown. Labour and their supporters of course cry "Tory cuts" as if it's lack of money that's the problem, but it's much more than that and simply throwing money in does nothing more than delay the inevitable. The NHS is the last survivor of the era of the great nationalised monoliths like British Rail and the GPO and like them it's a socialist white elephant that has no place in the 21st century. I agree with Rewulf, restructure into a sustainable, partly self funding service or face the inevitable collapse.
  8. Just missing a couple of things like refuse hospital entry to drunks. Let the ambulances drop them at the nearest police station to be thrown in the cells to sleep it off. As for the topic I've no doubt things in the hospitals would be easier if the GPs - who seem to do less and less these days - were more available to those who pay their (often huge) salaries.
  9. My wife and I are both from modest working class backgrounds, especially my wife. We have 3 sons whom we supported through university costing around £10K each, but since then none has asked for any further financial support apart from one who moved back for a year to save up his deposit. They all live in their own (mortgaged) homes and none has been to the food bank. It's not about going to university, it's about taking the right course at the right university. Too many go primarily for the freedom and lifestyle and take any old subject that's not too demanding like textile design or philosophy then, when they leave, they end up working somewhere like the local council because they can't get the well paid career position they expected.
  10. The book which is the basis for the TV series was written by Ben Macintire who also narrated a 3 part documentary telling the real story and containing clips recorded in the 80s from a number of survivors of the original 60 or so L Detachment recruits. These clips included David Stirling himself.
  11. During lockdown I was appalled at the way Sunak dished out a staggering amount of cash in business support without any proper checks into the veracity of the claims. That, along with furlough abuse, cost the country an eye watering amount of money, many billions of which was claimed fraudulently. Almost the first thing he did after becoming PM was to wind up the fraud enquiry. No doubt it would have reflected poorly on him. But I strongly approve of him overriding the medicos and ordering that people arriving from China will be tested for Covid before being allowed entry. Sunak isn't a billionaire, but he is a typical product of the values of many Asian families in that he worked hard and did well at school and later qualified as a pharmacist. His wife is very rich in shares though as is the daughter of a billionaire business owner. She was non-dom but became resident when he became chancellor. That was probably a condition of his appointment. I'm prepared to give him a chance as I think he means well and is handling union dogma about right. If he can quiet down the awkward tory rebels the country might start to look on the government more favourably.
  12. I'm not sure anyone would accuse Harry of being intelligent and his wifey is just a scheming, streetwise opportunist.
  13. It wasn't directed at you personally. To explain. What I find incomprehensible is the lack of appreciation in the more deprived areas that education is important and is just as accessible to them as to those in the middle class areas. I keep hearing reports that poorer people have worse education - and they're always loaded with the underlying implication that it's worse simply because they poorer. My attitude is that it's really the other way around; they're poorer because they don't prioritise education and they don't comprehend aspiration so, as they did themselves, their children leave school as soon as possible, meaning that mostly they can only get carp jobs. Twenty years go by and the seething envy so many have for those who've done better in life is revved up by the Mick Lynch type of rabble rousing oratory and the usual demands for better pay and conditions (which is always code for more money). Sigh! And so it goes on, generation after generation.
  14. I can hear your arteries hardening from here in Gloucestershire.
  15. Same old same old. Why not prioritise an education, pass exams up to A level, slog through a 1st class degree in a "real" subject at a "proper" university and get accepted on a grad scheme with a major employer. Then be willing to put in 12 hour days for years, just like one of my sons who is now reaping the rewards. No one got rich sitting on their backside and whining about how unfair it all is.
  16. Amazing! And I thought the loony left finally died when Corbyn was ousted. Socialist control has never benefitted society as a whole anywhere, ever; not even China - and it never will. Socialism is designed to benefit a tiny few at the expense of those who's interests they claim to represent.
  17. Dead right. Real science assesses the data before deciding what the result is. As it is we all have to live with the consequences of the stupid Nett Zero nonsense thanks to so called scientists who assumed it must be CO2 "Because we can't think what else it could be". And all the time it's hiding in plain sight above their heads.
  18. The parking is pretty much the same where we spent Christmas day at our son's in Thames Ditton. Last year there was a family a few doors along who had 5 cars, 2 of them electric, and the consequent cables draped across the pavement. They've moved out now but parking is still a matter of luck as very few of the homes have off street parking and those are mostly single vehicle spaces. There are about 100 homes in that street and as far as I could tell not a single EV. London and the south east has 10s of thousands of such streets and it's the same story in every city and town across the country. Further down the lane where we live there are 2 terraces of 6 cottages built for the mill workers in the 19th century. They are built at right angles to the lane and only 2 of the 12 can park on their own property. Parking all their vehicles in a narrow lane is a daily problem that affects/annoys properties well away from the terraces. Installing charge points in street lamps won't work there either as there are only 2 and they're on the wrong side of the road. Perhaps the scientific "experts" who accidently created the greatest hoax in history might consider applying some real science to climate change and stop guessing that it's carbon dioxide emissions.
  19. I filled up with petrol last Wednesday. Did a few shopping trips then on Christmas Day drove to London for a family Xmas and didn't spare the horses. Drove home Boxing Day and made 2 shopping trips since then. Probably covered 250+ miles all told and the tank's still half full. All went pretty smoothly for us but not so much for these folks: https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/28/six-hour-queues-show-what-its-really-like-owning-a-tesla-at-christmas-18004669/
  20. At your budget virtually any properly cared for gun will outlast you and probably your children. There are lefty guns available from Beretta, Blaser, CG, Browning etc. The dear old MK38s are well thought of by their aficionados but they're getting rarer on the clay courses and are certainly not the only fish in the sea.
  21. Rail "Workers". Hmmm. Back in the summer I was pottering on my allotment when some men dressed head to toe in HiViz orange ambled over and asked who they should see as they were here to tidy up the bushes etc growing through the fence from the embankment about 300 yds up the path and into the our allotment area. I directed them up to where a committee member was working. The 2 men came back about half an hour later and collected the other 4 men. After a smoke and a good old yack they all moseyed gently up to the fence. Parked in the road outside were 2 Network rail Sprinters and a flat bed truck. Those 6 men took 4 hours to trim a length of light bushes about 3 times as long as my hedge. The brash they chucked over onto the embankment. I can cut my 2 metre hedge on my own and bag up the clippings in about 40 minutes! Since 1 man in a small van could have done the entire job in an hour, it would have been more sensible, cheaper and less polluting if 5 of them had stayed back at base reading the Daily Mirror, so don't ask me to support them. Why disrupt the lives of ordinary people, we're all being hit by inflation.
  22. Precisely. Your EV might be better than a Chelsea tractor for local journeys, but what if you wanted a weekend away at Wasdale Head in the Lakes. Would you take the EV and all the stress and time spent looking for charging points or would it be the wife's 4x4?
  23. Westward

    NHS crisis

    Lets also remember that NHS staff are still getting discounts at many shops and places such as gyms. Something now irreversible that started during the pandemic, when in reality only a small minority of staff and nurses were working in the Covid wards.
  24. Westward

    NHS crisis

    What people overlook amid all the emotive babbling, is that unlike paramedics and ambulance drivers, nursing is a career, at least for those that want more than just a job. There are various nursing grades up to senior Nurse Practitioner position and they can earn as much as £87K. The NHS is hopelessly out of balance; managers can't manage unless those who really control our hospitals (i.e. The hugely well paid, mostly part time consultants) cooperate. The disparity between the top earners, often only putting in 2 days a week for the NHS and the troops is outrageous, especially since many of the the troops put in shifts and other unsociable hours or have to go out in all weathers and conditions to to provide 1st line treatment to the very sick or often enough those with terrible injuries. Meanwhile the consultants spend half their time seeing private patients and earning more per hour than some of the troops earn in a week. The NHS must ultimately implode if it carries on providing free care for anyone who comes calling. And I don't just mean free treatment for health tourists, although that's outrageous enough, but the millions who offload responsibility for their own health to the NHS. The burden of dealing with largely avoidable conditions sucks in an ever increasing proportion of the NHS budgets and other resources. It's long overdue for the government to get a proper grip on the health service and stop fannying around with nonsense like Nett Zero.
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