Mr Browns Green Budget

[Mogs]

Now that Mr Brown has reduced to tax on some cars

see here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4834480.stm)

has anyone found any info for bikes?

The Beeb gives an example of £40 for a .7ltr Smart car, since most bikes are smaller.... I was wondering.

[Foey]

It's gone up, not by much though. :cry:

[Samurai]

It's gone up, not by much though. :cry:

How does that work :roll:

We have lower emissions less wheels so why should we pay more :evil:

we always get screwed

[lynw]

It's gone up, not by much though. :cry:

How does that work :roll:

We have lower emissions less wheels so why should we pay more :evil:

we always get screwed

Thats a fallacy. Bikes are not necessarily greener than some cars. MAG would like you to believe they are but no bike has cat converters on iirc, so how can anyone remotely say a sports bike with 40mpg is greener than other vehicles? You can argue it on less time spent stationary but end of day bikes are not green vehicles.

And I fail to see how we are screwed when VED has gone up a whopping £2.

Especially in light of the personal tax allowance raised by £140. :roll:

[Viney]

It's gone up, not by much though. :cry:

How does that work :roll:

We have lower emissions less wheels so why should we pay more :evil:

we always get screwed

Thats a fallacy. Bikes are not necessarily greener than some cars. MAG would like you to believe they are but no bike has cat converters on iirc, so how can anyone remotely say a sports bike with 40mpg is greener than other vehicles? You can argue it on less time spent stationary but end of day bikes are not green vehicles.

And I fail to see how we are screwed when VED has gone up a whopping £2.

Especially in light of the personal tax allowance raised by £140. :roll:

True. Most bikes actully emit high levels of Co2, on which VED for cars is now being measured. New bikes with cats come out, we go out remove the cat and whack on a loud race can. I think that the tax on bikes is fairly cheap. If we all had 600 supersports, then we would pay less. The fact that the SV is over this, it puts it into the next band. So i suggest that if you want to drop £20 a year, then buy a 600 supersports.

[Samurai]

It's gone up, not by much though. :cry:

How does that work :roll:

We have lower emissions less wheels so why should we pay more :evil:

we always get screwed

Thats a fallacy. Bikes are not necessarily greener than some cars. MAG would like you to believe they are but no bike has cat converters on iirc, so how can anyone remotely say a sports bike with 40mpg is greener than other vehicles? You can argue it on less time spent stationary but end of day bikes are not green vehicles.

And I fail to see how we are screwed when VED has gone up a whopping £2.

Especially in light of the personal tax allowance raised by £140. :roll:

True. Most bikes actully emit high levels of Co2, on which VED for cars is now being measured. New bikes with cats come out, we go out remove the cat and whack on a loud race can. I think that the tax on bikes is fairly cheap. If we all had 600 supersports, then we would pay less. The fact that the SV is over this, it puts it into the next band. So i suggest that if you want to drop £20 a year, then buy a 600 supersports.

Didn't really look at it like that, suppose we do get a pritty good deal, :oops:

[timwilky]

I fail to understand personal allowances with regard to taxation. I interpret this as being the minimum you need in order to survive. Come on Brown how can anyone live on 5 grand. Make personal allowance at least £15,000 and then get rid of the stupid 10 and 40% rates.

OK would reduce his income a bit. But at the same time get rid of silly burocracy that we are paying for like tax credits, income support,, simplify tax returns and calcs etc. then sack the civil servants who administer this rubbish and you wont need the extra money to pay for their salaries and generous pensions. So it is win win for the goverment/country and a few civil servants have to work for a change.

scrap excise duty on motorcycles, they cause far less road damage than cars. Do not cause congestion etc. The public should be encouraged onto powered two wheelers where like me public transport is not an option

[Viney]

I fail to understand personal allowances with regard to taxation. I interpret this as being the minimum you need in order to survive. Come on Brown how can anyone live on 5 grand. Make personal allowance at least £15,000 and then get rid of the stupid 10 and 40% rates.

OK would reduce his income a bit. But at the same time get rid of silly burocracy that we are paying for like tax credits, income support,, simplify tax returns and calcs etc. then sack the civil servants who administer this rubbish and you wont need the extra money to pay for their salaries and generous pensions. So it is win win for the goverment/country and a few civil servants have to work for a change.

scrap excise duty on motorcycles, they cause far less road damage than cars. Do not cause congestion etc. The public should be encouraged onto powered two wheelers where like me public transport is not an option

Id vote for you :D

[Ceri JC]

I fail to understand personal allowances with regard to taxation. I interpret this as being the minimum you need in order to survive. Come on Brown how can anyone live on 5 grand. Make personal allowance at least £15,000 and then get rid of the stupid 10 and 40% rates.

OK would reduce his income a bit. But at the same time get rid of silly burocracy that we are paying for like tax credits, income support,, simplify tax returns and calcs etc. then sack the civil servants who administer this rubbish and you wont need the extra money to pay for their salaries and generous pensions. So it is win win for the goverment/country and a few civil servants have to work for a change.

scrap excise duty on motorcycles, they cause far less road damage than cars. Do not cause congestion etc. The public should be encouraged onto powered two wheelers where like me public transport is not an option

Id vote for you :D

Me too. Please run for PM.

[lynw]

I fail to understand personal allowances with regard to taxation. I interpret this as being the minimum you need in order to survive. Come on Brown how can anyone live on 5 grand. Make personal allowance at least £15,000 and then get rid of the stupid 10 and 40% rates.

OK would reduce his income a bit. But at the same time get rid of silly burocracy that we are paying for like tax credits, income support,, simplify tax returns and calcs etc. then sack the civil servants who administer this rubbish and you wont need the extra money to pay for their salaries and generous pensions. So it is win win for the goverment/country and a few civil servants have to work for a change.

scrap excise duty on motorcycles, they cause far less road damage than cars. Do not cause congestion etc. The public should be encouraged onto powered two wheelers where like me public transport is not an option

Edited: sorry Im having a bad day and fed up with people slating the civil service when the reality in my department is so far from the Sun editorials perception we're all going to swan off into the sunset at 60.

1. Sack all the civil servants, then what happens? No one gets paid their pension, child benefit, or other benefits. No one pays their taxes as theres no-one to enforce it. Pretty unfeasible suggestion.

2. I missed the " few civil servants have to work for a change" earlier. You can shove that comment where the sun doesnt shine. Most of my colleagues, myself included, work way over the hours we are paid for to do a good, proper job. So take your misguided and misinformed opinions and comment when you actually have some real experience and understanding of our working conditions and not make presumptions.

3. If you don't like the tax system here, emmigrate. I can assure you its not the worst in the world by a long way. In this country there is no VAT on most food or childrens clothing. In other countries there is. You would have found raising your children in some European countries far more expensive than here with VAT rates at 19-25% applicable on a lot of goods in the EC.

* and breathes.... sorry just fed up of the lazy, overpaid, underworked civil servant portrayal when it is not the case for the majority.

[Swiss]

I have often thought it would be far easier to have one tax, let's say income tax.
Currently you are taxed on what you earn,
Once this slice has been taken you then pay tax on pretty much everything you buy in form of VAT, road tax, tax on fuel, tax on your savings, tax on inheritance, council tax etc etc.

I wonder what the true % of your cash goes to the tax man.

Get's my goat, which has probably been goat taxed!

[Flamin_Squirrel]

I have often thought it would be far easier to have one tax, let's say income tax.
Currently you are taxed on what you earn,
Once this slice has been taken you then pay tax on pretty much everything you buy in form of VAT, road tax, tax on fuel, tax on your savings, tax on inheritance, council tax etc etc.

I wonder what the true % of your cash goes to the tax man.

Get's my goat, which has probably been goat taxed!

Average is about 40%. To put this into perspective this means most people are effectively working from Jan to June for the government before they earn a penny for themselves.

Mr Brown triuphantly announced that "In 1997, we spent £33bn a year on the NHS - soon we will be spending £92bn" as if this was a good thing. Anyone notice a difference (for the better, I hasten to add) since '97? As far as I can see thats 59 billion being wasted on SFA!

The way I see it, you give the government more money, and they spend it on whatever they can, most often wasting it. The only way to get them to spend more efficiently is to give them less to start with so they're forced to be more efficent - after all, thats what they keep telling the armed forces!

DOWN WITH TAXES! :twisted:

[kwak zzr]

I have often thought it would be far easier to have one tax, let's say income tax.
Currently you are taxed on what you earn,
Once this slice has been taken you then pay tax on pretty much everything you buy in form of VAT, road tax, tax on fuel, tax on your savings, tax on inheritance, council tax etc etc.

I wonder what the true % of your cash goes to the tax man.

Get's my goat, which has probably been goat taxed!

prob about 90% theifing,robbing,****s! <sorry MR Blair.

[Filipe M.]

3. If you don't like the tax system here, emmigrate. I can assure you its not the worst in the world by a long way. In this country there is no VAT on most food or childrens clothing. In other countries there is. You would have found raising your children in some European countries far more expensive than here with VAT rates at 19-25% applicable on a lot of goods in the EC.

5% to 21% around here. Everything gets taxed, even if at a "low" 5% rate. Those will be the "essential goods", like milk, bread and the like. Of course it's the government who decides what is and isn't "essential". Less essential goods are rated at 12%, everything else gets 21%.

Then there are some funny things... books are taxed at 5%, CDs & DVDs at 21%. And we pay VAT over other taxes as well. The best example is still the automobile market. We pay the "Automobile Tax", which is on Europe's top of the most expensive list, then they add that to the base price and calculate VAT over the sum. And still they have the nerve to say that double-taxing is forbidden by law. :roll:

[lynw]

:)

[northwind]

Thats a fallacy. Bikes are not necessarily greener than some cars. MAG would like you to believe they are but no bike has cat converters on iirc, so how can anyone remotely say a sports bike with 40mpg is greener than other vehicles? You can argue it on less time spent stationary but end of day bikes are not green vehicles.


Well, not true, lots of modern bikes have cats. But cats are really a bit of a scam. They do clean up emissions, but the environmental costs of making and disposing of cats is, in the case of a lower mileage vehicle, greater than the improvement. So to get around emissions laws for vehicles, they're simply trading environmental damage from running the vehicle, for more environmental damage when building the things. The net damage caused is greater in almost every case for a bike with a cat compared to a bike without.

It also impairs power output. Which in this numbers-driven world means they build yet more peaky motors to get around out, since it'd be unthinkable for this year's GSXR to make less hp than last years. And of course, most engines are at their worst emissions wise when hard stressed, and peaky engines change gear more often which is where the greatest emissions output occurs.

Also, a lot of bikes are treated as disposable now, and cover absurdly low miles. 10,000 miles after 2 years is considered high mileage, and people happily upgrade every 2 years. So the environmental cost of building the things is spread across a ridiculously short lifespan. Compare that with cars, which will typically cover many times as many mile and last longer.

Bikes could be made a good adn economic option, but bike fashion would be against it. 40mpg from a vehicle that weighs less than a fat man? Absolutely absurd. But imagine the response if Honda put out the next Blade, and it made 125bhp, but did 10 miles more per gallon and breathed out perfume.

[Foey]

Mr Brown triuphantly announced that "In 1997, we spent £33bn a year on the NHS - soon we will be spending £92bn" as if this was a good thing. Anyone notice a difference (for the better, I hasten to add) since '97? As far as I can see thats 59 billion being wasted on SFA!

[/quote]


Well for a start the waiting times for operations is down which means that the throughput of our theatres has increased drastically, take into account that each & every year the price of everything used by the NHS increases, some drugs now cost as much as an SV & more per dose, equipment wears out so has to be replaced & i'm talking £45k for an anaesthetic machine or operating table, instruments used have now got so technical & varied that you cant keep them all in stock so have to hire sets in for what can be thousands of pounds per operation, building works for more beds or operating theatres to keep treating the ever ageing & expanding population, all building maintenance costs, VAST electricity & heating bills etc etc etc, £92 billion dont go far.

[Anonymous]

Wasnt going to comment on this thread, but i felt compelled to comment on these two points.


1. Sack all the civil servants, then what happens? No one gets paid their pension, child benefit, or other benefits. No one pays their taxes as theres no-one to enforce it. Pretty unfeasible suggestion.

Can i just point out that my generation arent going to get a pension anyway. We need our own policies.



I missed the " few civil servants have to work for a change" earlier. You can shove that comment where the sun doesnt shine. Most of my colleagues, myself included, work way over the hours we are paid for to do a good, proper job. So take your misguided and misinformed opinions and comment when you actually have some real experience and understanding of our working conditions and not make presumptions.


Erm... ok how do i put this politely. It may be the case where you are, but here where i am things are VERY VERY different. For example.. the council work from 9am to 4pm - no ifs or buts, they stop at 4. The DHSS open at 9.30 and shut at 3pm :shock: Ever other department i know opens at 9am and shuts at 4.30. How is that working over the hours?

Its not. I get into the office at 8am LATEST, and leave normally at 8-9pm. I work weekends (again unpaid) because i know it needs to be done. I only get paid my salary, nothing extra for OT. I dont get a pension (its something we're looking at), every dealing i have had with local government has left me TOTALLY lost and pi55ed off, i get passed from pillar to post with no one prepared to take responsibility for any particular issue, my complaints about this fall on deaf ears, written complaints go unanswered even when i send it recorded delivery and get POD. All in all - in my experience, civil servants ARE underworked and overpaid for the contribution they make to society.

Nothing personal there... just my personal opinion BASED upon EXPERIENCE.

[Gnan]

i must admit to having had good experiences when dealing with government, yeah you get the odd jobsworth but most of them (esp. the DVLA) have been excellent at delivering customer service and most private companies could do well to learn from them!

[Anonymous]

i must admit to having had good experiences when dealing with government, yeah you get the odd jobsworth but most of them (esp. the DVLA) have been excellent at delivering customer service and most private companies could do well to learn from them!

DVLA and excellent customer service!? Are you mad!?

Im locked in a battle with them at the moment regarding a car which was written off last year. They want to take me to court over a load of things which they claim i hadnt informed them of.. Even though i had AND have proof of it. Let alone the fact that they dealt with the insurance company when it was written off anyway!

Plus when ever i call them it takes me about 20-30 mins just to get through to someone as i spend forever and a day going through their damned "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" PBX system.

Sorry... i hate the DVLA at the moment. :lol:

[lynw]

Erm... ok how do i put this politely. It may be the case where you are, but here where i am things are VERY VERY different. For example.. the council work from 9am to 4pm - no ifs or buts, they stop at 4. The DHSS open at 9.30 and shut at 3pm :shock: Ever other department i know opens at 9am and shuts at 4.30. How is that working over the hours?

*sigh* just once it would be nice if you could engage your brain. :roll:

Just because the public hours are those advertised doesn't mean they are the hours the staff work. Most of my colleagues get in at 7.30-8am and leave around 5 on a good day, though the official hours for the public is 9-4.

All in all - in my experience, civil servants ARE underworked and overpaid for the contribution they make to society.

Nothing personal there... just my personal opinion BASED upon EXPERIENCE.

Well how much of that is down to your attitude? Trust me, most people I know in the civil service are helpful and friendly and go out their way to make sure people get the information they need. If you come across as snotty you will get peoples backs up and you may find that this happens to you a lot. Just something you may wish to consider given most people find their experience dealing with us helpful.

And if you want to know my contribution to society - its currently about £8,000,000 extra to the treasury in 12 1/2 years, 15 paedophiles in jail, one gang of armed robbers in jail. So what exactly do you contribute? :P :wink: :D

[Anonymous]

Erm... ok how do i put this politely. It may be the case where you are, but here where i am things are VERY VERY different. For example.. the council work from 9am to 4pm - no ifs or buts, they stop at 4. The DHSS open at 9.30 and shut at 3pm :shock: Ever other department i know opens at 9am and shuts at 4.30. How is that working over the hours?

*sigh* just once it would be nice if you could engage your brain. :roll:

Just because the public hours are those advertised doesn't mean they are the hours the staff work. Most of my colleagues get in at 7.30-8am and leave around 5 on a good day, though the official hours for the public is 9-4.

All in all - in my experience, civil servants ARE underworked and overpaid for the contribution they make to society.

Nothing personal there... just my personal opinion BASED upon EXPERIENCE.

Well how much of that is down to your attitude? Trust me, most people I know in the civil service are helpful and friendly and go out their way to make sure people get the information they need. If you come across as snotty you will get peoples backs up and you may find that this happens to you a lot. Just something you may wish to consider given most people find their experience dealing with us helpful.

And if you want to know my contribution to society - its currently about £8,000,000 extra to the treasury in 12 1/2 years, 15 paedophiles in jail, one gang of armed robbers in jail. So what exactly do you contribute? :P :wink: :D

Like i say Lynn.. nothing personal against you, but if you want to make it personal we can do - of course - off forum and in PM. Yes i did engage my brain - and YES it is those hours for people working at the council - cos i have friends, good close friends who WORK THERE. :roll: Oh and yes, on a good day ill be lucky if i do 13hrs without a break.

As for my attitude - you've not dealt with me, if you had, you wouldnt be calling it in to question. I know damned well that ranting and raging to someone in a customer service role gets you nowhere - cos ive been that customer service person myself. Im not snotty in the slightest, even my compaints arent snotty, they are written on FACT and presented in a well written, comprehensive fashion.

Oh and as for what i contribute... well i give pretty much all my spare time up to work.. so its more a question of what the Company contributes. Check us out - www.gpgengland.com.

Business Link and a few other departments of the OCG have estimated that we add approximately £264 MILLION in corporate tax alone over the next 33 months, not taking into account income tax and NI contributions. :wink: :P

[Swiss]

I fail to see what any of this has to with
"Mister Browns Green Budget"
:shock: :?

[Ceri JC]

Just as an aside to GYKD and LynW's point; my father has worked in a large section of the civil services (several thousand people in his buildings) and confirms that the common perception of them being idle and beauracratic and taking ages to do "useful work" is true, but that the pension/pay side of things isn't as good as the tabloids would have us believe.

By feeling: They really seem to have a massive fascination with beauracracy and protocol and apply it in a "regardless of common sense", manner. This is wasteful of resources (how hard the staff actually work is irrelevant if the work they're doing is meaningless and not actually to do with their core business). Something I like about working in a corporate environment is that I can say to my boss; "look this'll cost x amount, but it'll be more cost effective to buy it now than continue with the way we're currently doing it" and he just signs it off, simple as that. Whatever I need then arrives in 2/3 days and is on my desk and I can carry on with the job in hand.

I know full well if I worked for a government dept. I'd have to put a request in, probably with a report justifying it, my boss would look over it, it'd go up and down the chain of command several times, before reaching someone who has no idea of what it's needed for or its usefulness and then arbiterilly approves it or says no. Needless to say, the whole process costs 2-3 times what the thing that was needed did in the first place. Even if the people are worked ragged doing it (I know when I've visited government offices that's seldom been the case), it's not exactly "useful work" IE what the taxpayer is paying that section for, be it pensions, policing, local government, street cleaning, etc.

I've tried applying to government agencies a few times and have come away with the impression, "If they're this much of a pain when they're trying to get you to work for them, imagine what they're like once you're actually there..."

[Anonymous]

Just as an aside to GYKD and LynW's point; my father has worked in a large section of the civil services (several thousand people in his buildings) and confirms that the common perception of them being idle and beauracratic and taking ages to do "useful work" is true, but that the pension/pay side of things isn't as good as the tabloids would have us believe.

By feeling: They really seem to have a massive fascination with beauracracy and protocol and apply it in a "regardless of common sense", manner. This is wasteful of resources (how hard the staff actually work is irrelevant if the work they're doing is meaningless and not actually to do with their core business). Something I like about working in a corporate environment is that I can say to my boss; "look this'll cost x amount, but it'll be more cost effective to buy it now than continue with the way we're currently doing it" and he just signs it off, simple as that. Whatever I need then arrives in 2/3 days and is on my desk and I can carry on with the job in hand.

I know full well if I worked for a government dept. I'd have to put a request in, probably with a report justifying it, my boss would look over it, it'd go up and down the chain of command several times, before reaching someone who has no idea of what it's needed for or its usefulness and then arbiterilly approves it or says no. Needless to say, the whole process costs 2-3 times what the thing that was needed did in the first place. Even if the people are worked ragged doing it (I know when I've visited government offices that's seldom been the case), it's not exactly "useful work" IE what the taxpayer is paying that section for, be it pensions, policing, local government, street cleaning, etc.

I've tried applying to government agencies a few times and have come away with the impression, "If they're this much of a pain when they're trying to get you to work for them, imagine what they're like once you're actually there..."

Exactly. Thank you, thats what i wanted to say, but couldnt be bothered to write it all out. :lol:

I think one thing the public sector forgets ever so easy, is that they are there to provide a service to the public - therefore regardless of how snotty any particular person is - they still have a duty to honour the complaint and investigate in accordance with the local governments' consitution stated SLA's.

Civil Servants are just that, servants to society.. you are there to serve us. :wink: :lol: :lol: So... how about that cuppa i ordered Lynn....

[Filipe M.]

Milk, bread and "essential" foods here are zero rated. The rules were in place before the Sixth Directive and can be changed - but once a positive rate goes on it can never go back to 0%. You can thank Brussels for that one.

Yep, we've got another one to thank Brussels for: baby diapers. We had them at 5%, now they're threatening to sue our government if they don't put them at 21%. :roll:


The Dutch have something similar to the automobile tax I believe too. I suspect they get away with it as being a duty rather than a tax. It make a difference in how they can treat it - its why if you import something you pay the duty, then you pay the VAT on top of the duty inclusive value.

Although it is seen as double taxation it technically isn't. The duty rates are effectively there to stop the balance of trade becoming too inequitable and no-one buying in their own countries. Or that is the basic reasoning behind it.

I could understand that one, except that our automobile tax is brutally high (we've had cars paying more tax than base price), and it's called exactly that: Imposto Automóvel (automobile tax), just like our VAT is called IVA (Imposto sobre o Valor Acrescentado). :roll:

[lynw]

Exactly. Thank you, thats what i wanted to say, but couldnt be bothered to write it all out. :lol:

I think one thing the public sector forgets ever so easy, is that they are there to provide a service to the public - therefore regardless of how snotty any particular person is - they still have a duty to honour the complaint and investigate in accordance with the local governments' consitution stated SLA's.

Civil Servants are just that, servants to society.. you are there to serve us. :wink: :lol: :lol: So... how about that cuppa i ordered Lynn....

Don't confuse public servants working for local government with all civil servants. I am aware the working conditions are different.

As it goes, most people in my department do work hard and do try to do a good job, are courteous and civil even with people screaming down the phone. Though like every job you have your bad mannered people and shirkers. I just hate this perception that we are all like that.

Ceri, come and work for Customs and then say we arent worked ragged. Maybe this department is different to others but certainly we have time deadlines for getting money back to traders which means I will have no weekend this week because I also have a complex fraud case to finalise by Monday as well as release 10 cases worth of repayments which landed this week.

And btw GYKD, the :P :wink: :D was meant so you could realise I wasnt being personal but having a light hearted dig about the contribution comment you made. Do stop taking it all so seriously. :wink: :D

Right, off to do more work for a while. For the record, Ill be leaving at 7.15 this evening. :twisted:

[Biker Biggles]

Filipe---I look forward to contributing to your country's ever eager coffers when I take a holiday there this summer. :) Just make sure the weather is good in July :lol:

[lynw]

Exactly. Thank you, thats what i wanted to say, but couldnt be bothered to write it all out. :lol:

I think one thing the public sector forgets ever so easy, is that they are there to provide a service to the public - therefore regardless of how snotty any particular person is - they still have a duty to honour the complaint and investigate in accordance with the local governments' consitution stated SLA's.

Civil Servants are just that, servants to society.. you are there to serve us. :wink: :lol: :lol: So... how about that cuppa i ordered Lynn....

Don't confuse public servants working for local government with all civil servants. I am aware the working conditions are different.

As it goes, most people in my department do work hard and do try to do a good job, are courteous and civil even with people screaming down the phone. Though like every job you have your bad mannered people and shirkers. I just hate this perception that we are all like that.

Ceri, come and work for Customs and then say we arent worked ragged. Maybe this department is different to others but certainly we have time deadlines for getting money back to traders which means I will have no weekend this week because I also have a complex fraud case to finalise by Monday as well as release 10 cases worth of repayments which landed this week.

** Actually worked it out, it probably is because we have legal deadlines to meet which means we have to do the work. Conceed other departments may not be so deadline orientated :wink: :P :lol:

And btw GYKD, the :P :wink: :D was meant so you could realise I wasnt being personal but having a light hearted dig about the contribution comment you made. Do stop taking it all so seriously. :wink: :D

Right, off to do more work for a while. For the record, Ill be leaving at 7.15 this evening. :twisted:

[Filipe M.]

Filipe---I look forward to contributing to your country's ever eager coffers when I take a holiday there this summer. :) Just make sure the weather is good in July :lol:

It'll probably be ;) where are you going to? Algarve?

[Flamin_Squirrel]

Mr Brown triuphantly announced that "In 1997, we spent £33bn a year on the NHS - soon we will be spending £92bn" as if this was a good thing. Anyone notice a difference (for the better, I hasten to add) since '97? As far as I can see thats 59 billion being wasted on SFA!




Well for a start the waiting times for operations is down which means that the throughput of our theatres has increased drastically, take into account that each & every year the price of everything used by the NHS increases, some drugs now cost as much as an SV & more per dose, equipment wears out so has to be replaced & i'm talking £45k for an anaesthetic machine or operating table, instruments used have now got so technical & varied that you cant keep them all in stock so have to hire sets in for what can be thousands of pounds per operation, building works for more beds or operating theatres to keep treating the ever ageing & expanding population, all building maintenance costs, VAST electricity & heating bills etc etc etc, £92 billion dont go far.

Yeah but you could spend an infinite amount of money on the NHS and it still wouldn't be perfect. We used to have an NHS run on 1/3 the current budget and it was far more efficient. Now we spend 3 times more, but is it 3 times better? No.

[Biker Biggles]

Filipe---I'm going to Lagos with Mrs Biggles for a week from July 14.Bound to be sunny then,or at least warm rain. :)

[Filipe M.]

Filipe---I'm going to Lagos with Mrs Biggles for a week from July 14.Bound to be sunny then,or at least warm rain. :)

Nice place, haven't been there for ages, but really liked it when I was a kid. :D

[diamond]

Just as an aside to GYKD and LynW's point; my father has worked in a large section of the civil services (several thousand people in his buildings) and confirms that the common perception of them being idle and beauracratic and taking ages to do "useful work" is true, but that the pension/pay side of things isn't as good as the tabloids would have us believe.

By feeling: They really seem to have a massive fascination with beauracracy and protocol and apply it in a "regardless of common sense", manner. This is wasteful of resources (how hard the staff actually work is irrelevant if the work they're doing is meaningless and not actually to do with their core business). Something I like about working in a corporate environment is that I can say to my boss; "look this'll cost x amount, but it'll be more cost effective to buy it now than continue with the way we're currently doing it" and he just signs it off, simple as that. Whatever I need then arrives in 2/3 days and is on my desk and I can carry on with the job in hand.

I know full well if I worked for a government dept. I'd have to put a request in, probably with a report justifying it, my boss would look over it, it'd go up and down the chain of command several times, before reaching someone who has no idea of what it's needed for or its usefulness and then arbiterilly approves it or says no. Needless to say, the whole process costs 2-3 times what the thing that was needed did in the first place. Even if the people are worked ragged doing it (I know when I've visited government offices that's seldom been the case), it's not exactly "useful work" IE what the taxpayer is paying that section for, be it pensions, policing, local government, street cleaning, etc.

I've tried applying to government agencies a few times and have come away with the impression, "If they're this much of a pain when they're trying to get you to work for them, imagine what they're like once you're actually there..."

Blimey Ceri you must have visited where i work thats spot on. Although i think i'm in a very slack part of the civil service.

And for the record i work exactly 7 hours and 24 mins per day and then i leave, and if i don't get an hour for lunch and 2 half hour breaks in my day there's trouble.

Oh i love being a civil servant :wink: :lol:

[northwind]

It's also worth mentioning that the procedures available on the NHS are vastly superior than they were 10 or 20 years ago, and that many are more expensive. For instance, a subject close to my heart. A modern hip replacement is better but more expensive than a traditional one. Or the surgery used to fix my leg is phenomenally expensive compared with a half-hip replacement, it's entirely keyhole, and the surgery is more complex. (the parts are cheap, 3 x M8x80 stainless bolts...).

People are living longer, and being kept alive when otherwise they would have died- my grandma lived 3 years in hospital when she would most likely have died 10 years ago- and 3 years of care plus a couple of high-level surgeries costs an absolute fortune. There;s more tratable cancers, more serious illnesses or injuries that can be fixed, more that can be done to extend the life of a terminally ill patient.

Using my hip as an example again, the aftercare costs are also high- I was paying regular and lengthy visits to a top-level NHS physio for a year, as well as several post-op outpatients visits for mobility and bone-density checks and x-rays. That all costs, and it would have been far cheaper had they done a half-hip replacement, since there'd be very little point- my surgery has a much fuller recovery potential, which means more physio and checkups. A half-hip will always leave reduced strength and mobility no matter what, so there's no need for physio that'll return you to full health.

But all people care about is waiting lists and the number of beds. My consultant reckons that if they went back to using procedures from a decade ago, when he started in orthopedics, their waitings lists would go down by half within a year, since they'd have many people simply beyond help, and many people getting inferior treatments that are easier to implement. But the wards would be rammed, since convolescence was longer. (this is, some say, the main reason that ward sizes and available beds continue to fall- the actual availability is much the same as it was before due to faster turnaround of patients)

If anyone here thinks the NHS is no better today than it was a decade ago, look up the implications of a hip replacement at 27, compared with the implications of a keyhole in-situ traction surgery. Today I'm almost as fit as I was before my break. I can run, jump, ride a bike, and I may never need more surgery. With a hip replacement, I'd have less mobility, and more surgery every 10-15 years for the rest of my lief, with a worse prognosis each time they replaced the hip.

Or ask a HIV sufferer if the money spent on the drugs that stave off AIDS is wasted- that's a phenomenal expense. Or a brain tumour sufferer whose cancer can be treated now.

[Filipe M.]

It's also worth mentioning... yada yada yada ...cancer can be treated now.

Hey PhillipMac, he's gone and done it again... :roll:

=D> =D> =D>

[Ceri JC]

Or the surgery used to fix my leg is phenomenally expensive compared with a half-hip replacement, it's entirely keyhole, and the surgery is more complex. (the parts are cheap, 3 x M8x80 stainless bolts...).


Perhaps, like we do to combat spiralling servicing costs, we should all do a bit more DIY maintenance on ourselves, as well as our bikes? Hein Gericke do a stainless bolt kit for £16.99 that includes 3 M8 bolts. Half pint of vodka as anaesthetic (£6 bottle), plus £6 for 20 minutes labour and I could have the job done for under £30. :wink:

In all seriousness, as much as I think the NHS wastes a lot of money, I must agree that part of the problem is the expense of some of the new treatments. We've discovered most of the cheap, common and easy stuff like putting a plaster cast on broken limbs, anti-biotics, etc. I reckon most of the breakthroughs in the future are going to be in the highly complex, specialist and (consequently) expensive areas...

Now, this is extremely controversial, but you have to ask yourself, at what point do we say, sorry, that's too pricey for the NHS, private only, mate. Consider in, say, 50 years time, we develop some highly expensive gene therapy that will only ever be used on 1 or 2 people in a million. It costs 6 million a treatment. Even if it's lifesaving, can you justify that money being spent helping one person when it could be spent on say, more ambulances and medic bikes to respond to road traffic accidents on the M25 that'd probably save a couple of lives a year?

It's a point I often debate with my girlfriend. She had M.E. for years, so understandably really recognises health as being the hugely valuable thing it is. I however, tend to also highly favour liberty and the ability to enjoy life, as well. She thinks health should take priority above all else. My argument is that if we neglect, say, education to fund it, we won't continue to make medical developments and improve health in the long run. Similarly, I'd rather have a life of say, 60 years and then die, having had a lot of disposable income for those years and a hell of a good time, rather than literally every penny other than that for food and shelter being taken by the government and spent on "health" for a few very unfortunate individuals.

No holidays abroad, no beer, no music, no bikes. It's a pretty bleak vision.

Should we also ban bikes, rock climbing, sailing, shooting, driving for any purpose other than commuting/business, alcohol, so there are fewer people in hospital with common complaints/injuries, so we have more money to treat those who have very rare diseases?

[northwind]

Perhaps, like we do to combat spiralling servicing costs, we should all do a bit more DIY maintenance on ourselves, as well as our bikes? Hein Gericke do a stainless bolt kit for £16.99 that includes 3 M8 bolts. Half pint of vodka as anaesthetic (£6 bottle), plus £6 for 20 minutes labour and I could have the job done for under £30. :wink:

No time for a proper answer to your post just now- it deserves one, I'll do it later, good post ;0 But a quickie here. When the consultant came round to see me after surgery, he asked how it felt. I told him I thought he'd overtorqued one of the bolts, it felt a wee bit tight... He thought I was being serious, and reassured me that they use a top quality torque wrench! I asked "Snap On"? No, Draper.

DRAPER! FFS! The shearing torque of steel in bone is only about 8nm, and they used a bloody Draper! If they'd told me I'd have bought them a Halfords one. they probably used zinc coated bolts from Homebase.

[Foey]

Mr Brown triuphantly announced that "In 1997, we spent £33bn a year on the NHS - soon we will be spending £92bn" as if this was a good thing. Anyone notice a difference (for the better, I hasten to add) since '97? As far as I can see thats 59 billion being wasted on SFA!




Well for a start the waiting times for operations is down which means that the throughput of our theatres has increased drastically, take into account that each & every year the price of everything used by the NHS increases, some drugs now cost as much as an SV & more per dose, equipment wears out so has to be replaced & i'm talking £45k for an anaesthetic machine or operating table, instruments used have now got so technical & varied that you cant keep them all in stock so have to hire sets in for what can be thousands of pounds per operation, building works for more beds or operating theatres to keep treating the ever ageing & expanding population, all building maintenance costs, VAST electricity & heating bills etc etc etc, £92 billion dont go far.

Yeah but you could spend an infinite amount of money on the NHS and it still wouldn't be perfect. We used to have an NHS run on 1/3 the current budget and it was far more efficient. Now we spend 3 times more, but is it 3 times better? No.


No organisation is ever perfect, you seem to be forgetting that it is no longer the NHS, hospitals are now NHS Trusts, i agree that they were far better when they were just NHS but Government insisted on the change to trusts, this has meant accountability for budgets hence contractors are bought in & standards go down, it's also meant the loss of crown immunity. The medical treatment a patient now receives though is far better than it was as standards & proceedures have changed & also as i said before many more patients are now treated per year than ever before.
The only way to get the NHS efficient & bring costs down is to keep the patients away, this is obviously impossible.

[northwind]

Now, this is extremely controversial, but you have to ask yourself, at what point do we say, sorry, that's too pricey for the NHS, private only, mate. Consider in, say, 50 years time, we develop some highly expensive gene therapy that will only ever be used on 1 or 2 people in a million. It costs 6 million a treatment. Even if it's lifesaving, can you justify that money being spent helping one person when it could be spent on say, more ambulances and medic bikes to respond to road traffic accidents on the M25 that'd probably save a couple of lives a year?


The hard part is, of course, exactly where you do draw the line. i think a huge part of it is quality of life. it's now posisble to literally keep people alive where they would simply have died in the past- but does that mean it's right to do it? You can save someone's life but leave them tied to machines for whatever's left of it, in constant pain, with no real freedom, not even the freedom to end their suffering. Just a bed a TV if they're lucky, and a visit from teh kids on saturday.

Or, maybe more emotive, you can keep a massively premature baby alive... But the kid will in most cases be prodoundly disabled, and will have a short lifespan. So you spend an absolute fortune on life-long care in orderfor someone to have a poor quality of life with no real chance of reaching adulthood.

It's never going to be my job to draw that line, thank ****, it's not something I could do I think. But it doesn't just have to be financial. it's a question they're going to come across more and more as things move on and more procedures come around.

They could probably have given my grandad another 5 years in a hospital after he started to deteriorate, but he would have hated that and chose not to. But in another year, he might not have been medically competent to make that decision, so then who does? The accountants? The doctors? The family?