What Do You Think Today?

[aliantha]

Yeah, I'd be going crazy if my mother were still alive. When she used to come out with one of her cockamamie comments, she'd always say, "They said that..." I'd say, "Who's 'they', Mom?" and she never really had an answer. Now she'd be sending me a link. Of course, now I could point her to Snopes, too....

[peter]

My local paper reported a case a few weeks ago, involving alledged cruelty at a geriatric nursing home where, it was reported, one of the residents had been restrained by being sat on by a large female care assistant.

A mile from where I work the largest post secondary education college in the country spends it's time churning out endless 'graduates' with qualifications in media studies [films and tv], sports science [games to you and me] and pop music [we have had three shop assistants all of whom were going to become DJ mixers].

If you look at the sits vacant columbs in the same local paper as mentioned above you will find numerous adverts for care workers for the above homes and all other aspects of care work, none of whom require any qualification whatsoever, pay minimum wage on zero hour contracts [the same homes charge £1000 per week for each resident staying in them]. As a result the workforce in these jobs is unmotivated, dissinterested, and there for the simple reason that they do a job no-one else wants to do and because no one else will employ them. Is it any wonder that occurences like the above occur.

So heres a suggestion. How about introducing legislation to say that any person entering any area of the care sector, be it mental health, geriatric care, disability care etc, must show motivation and commitment to the point of having completed a two year course in al laspects of care across the field, before they enter the service proper. Once having achieved this basic qualification, can I suggest that these workers are then paid a wage appropriate, and accorded respect comensurate with the highly challenging and responsible nature of the work they perform.

[deer of the dawn]

Great idea Peter, but few people really WANT to take care of the elderly and dying. To have to get a 2-yr certificate? They'd rather bag groceries. (Or collect Social Services checks.)

I think I'm really sick of Facebook today being the 24-hour Guvmint shutdown channel. Bleaahh. Especially all the fault-finding. It's a disaster that the whole D.C. bunch shares the blame for.

[peter]

Stick the £40,000 a year salary it deserves on the job DOTD and you may find people changing their minds.

[peter]

Yet again we in the UK are deluged by headlines in the daily press regarding punitive price-hikes by the energy companies way over and above their costs. Some of us will be old enough to remember, when concerns were raised about such profiteering practices at the time of privitisation of the public utility companies, that we were informed by the them Conservative government of the day that it would "never happen!" Even the suggestion was ludicrous. Reason in my book never to again trust anything that comes out of the mouth of a Tory politician and never again to put an X on a ballot paper next to ones name.

[I'm Murrin]

Thing that was noted in the BBC articles on price rises: On an average £1300 annual bill the energy company makes £65 profit - that is, about 5%.

[peter]

That's not far off the profit margin of many business's opperating in the UK - those that are making any profit at all that is. Multiply that profit by the number of UK households and you fetch up with a tidy sum - all of which in my 'mixed economy' view should be going back into infrasructure development and not into shareholder pockets. Every year we face the possibility of 'hose-pipe bans' and water shortages and yet no new resevoirs are built - the reason: if shareholders were not paid a good return on their investment in the form of high dividends they wouldn't leave their money in the company and it's value would collapse. Provision of basic utilities is in my oppinion, not something that lends itself well to the vagaries of laissez-faire capitalism.

[peter]

What happens in America if you get sick and you don't have health insurance. Do you just...like....die or something?

[I'm Murrin]

If you need emergency room treatment they're not allowed to turn you away, I think. But they're not incentivised to give you more than bare minimum treatment in that case.

[peter]

But saying it's not an accident - say you have a heart attack or saying you have a cancer that is killing you [but slowly] - are you just sent home to die? If so, what is the score in relation to acess to drugs etc over the pharmacy counter - say palliative drugs or antibiotics etc. Do the medical profession maintain a 'closed shop' on the supply of these much needed theraputics, even in the face of their refusal to administer them [nb I've been in South America and other places where you can walk into a pharmacy and buy whatever you want - a fine thing in the absence of a doctor that is prepared to treat you, if you ask me!]

[Menolly]

In situations like that, there are charitable and volunteer organizations around which will do what they can for patients, sometimes for free but usually on a sliding scale depending on income and resources. I've been hooked up with two for the last year or so. But, many people won't do the legwork or research to find these organizations, or don't want to ask for help, and get the bare minimum treatment in the emergency room murrin mentions. Many times that treatment goes unpaid; the health system is being put in place to provide service to all while trying to prevent bankrupting the system.

...at least, I think I understand that much of it.

[Avatar]

If you need emergency room treatment they're not allowed to turn you away, I think.

But they will hound you with a bill afterwards, so there goes your credit rating.

--A

[peter]

I hope those who would dismantle the British NHS are reading this. The reality is that if the taking out of health insurance is voluntary, and provision of health care is dependant upon that insurance being in place, then there will always be people who will be found not to be covered when the need arises. Thus it falls either to the state to i) provide a health service funded out of public taxation or ii) to have mandatory contribution to health insurance built into the deduction system that opperates prior to wage payment [and for the state to pay the insurance for all who fall out of this deduction system for whatever reason.] The alternative is to always have people lying at home dying untreated - and accept it. [nb For those who find themselves in this pretty nasty situation, remeber the (still somewhat true) adage "What brandy can't cure, can't be cured".]

[I'm Murrin]

Going back to the subject of energy prices, it seems the UK is actually one of the cheapest countries in western Europe for energy - cheaper even than France, who are a major energy producer and exporter.

The US, of course, has incredibly low prices (less than half the UK's), because the US is close to self-sufficient.

[peter]

Is that by virtue of 'fracking' Murrin?

[I'm Murrin]

Wouldn't know anything about that. I thought it's just because the US has a lot of oil.

[peter]

I always understood that America's was 'the wrong kind of oil', hence their dependancy [too strong a word but I can't think of a better at present] on the Middle-East for pereolium grade oil. [I might be completely wrong on this but it's what I have believed to be the case]. The case for 'fracking' as a potential energy scource has [again I believe] yet to be proven, but the USA are very definitely forgeing ahead with development in this area.

[Vraith]

I always understood that America's was 'the wrong kind of oil', hence their dependancy [too strong a word but I can't think of a better at present] on the Middle-East for pereolium grade oil. [I might be completely wrong on this but it's what I have believed to be the case]. The case for 'fracking' as a potential energy scource has [again I believe] yet to be proven, but the USA are very definitely forgeing ahead with development in this area.

Actually, much of U.S. oil was very high grade...significantly higher than most middle east oil.
But the oil industry is extremely complex...so the total costs [from getting it out of the ground to putting it in the tank and all the stuff between, including wages and regulations], plus the sheer size of U.S. demand created the massive imports.
This is in the middle of a revolution, now that price and demand and tech have made extremely heavy oil economically feasible.

Fracking is MOSTLY used for Natural Gas...though there is a related process that is used for oil...especially for nearly-exhausted oil sites.

On the price, difference, though: I haven't checked in a while...but last time I did the U.S. pump price on gas includes taxes of under 1 dollar per gallon. U.K. price had nearly 6 dollars per gallon. [IIRC, the PRE-TAX cost per gallon was actually slightly LOWER in the U.K...in fact, in all of Europe.]

[peter]

It is estimated that annual tax evasion costs the UK 29 times more than annual bennefit fraud and yet the penalties levied for being caught are inversely proportional to their respective damage to the UK economy.

Consider the following. Of the 6000 britons named on the 'Lagarde List' as having undecalred accounts in the Swiss branch of HSBC, only one has been prosecuted and the remainder have been told to repay what they had attempted to cheat the taxman off [an average sum of £54,454], and been alowed to remain anonymous as long as they did so. Bennefit fraudster Abdurrahim Bendaw by coincidence illegally claimed an almost exact same sum [£54,595] and was given 10 months in prison, made to repay the money and named and shamed in the national press.

[Vraith]

It is estimated that annual tax evasion costs the UK 29 times more than annual bennefit fraud and yet the penalties levied for being caught are inversely proportional to their respective damage to the UK economy.

"LUXURY. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us..."

Umm...no...I mean I'm sure that's generally true almost everywhere [though the amount/ratio may change somewhat.]
In fact, I'm pretty certain I read an article showing that Greece would not have even HAD a debt crisis if it weren't for tax evaders and the European banks that helped them evade. [[The same banks, BTW, who were forcing them to crush their economy with austerity]].