Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

kabayiri

Re: the doctors strike. I wonder if there is a bigger power play going on. If the government are seen to gain control on Junior Doctors, they might feel encouraged to address other issues in the NHS.

I don't feel the current NHS is remotely sustainable. We are already hearing about cases of strain in A&E up and down the country.

Expensive care on things like Asbestos cancer won't peak until 2020; by which time the Diabetes epidemic will start to hit home hard.

Is a private-public NHS model all but inevitable?

SingleSue

Me and the boys are off on a holiday of a lifetime next year.

Mum and dad are feeling a little 'old' and realising their mortality and would like to see us do something while they are still here and while I still have some mobility left, so have offered (read insisted, nagged, got upset when refused, nagged some more, ground us down) to fund a long haul holiday for us if we agreed to pay £500 each (the boys have to pay their own not me, one of the provisos so as not to put too much pressure on me) and they will pay the rest as a sort of early inheritence.

Yesterday we booked to go to Cuba next July for 2weeks (I was MSE about it and didn't take the pee)

I did feel awkward about it but mum and dad were not going to take no for an answer, in the end it was easier to just say yes!

Since giving up their caravan, they are feeling so much better off financially as it was costing so much each year and with the amount of appointments for dad last year, they were not getting much use from it - for the money they paid last year, they could have gone abroad for some very nice holidays). They have also realised that they spent all those years paying into savings and pensions and are still living life as if they have no money in the bank because it was for their retirement (only taken them 10 years to realise that this IS their retirement, the thing they saved for!). With dad's health as it is, they now want to see something good coming out of that hardship, so a holiday for us, helping my siblings out and a new garden room for them (long long overdue, the old one is looking very dodgy now).

michaels

bugslet wrote: »

I buy over 4000 lites a week - there isn't a scale for how delirious I am:D

PN, one of the kitchen changes is that there will be a window in the kitchen at the back, so light should come through from the back of the house to the front door. Should make a world of difference.

The NP summer party this year may just be on Bugslet.....

Generali

SingleSue wrote: »

Me and the boys are off on a holiday of a lifetime next year.

Sounds pretty sweet SingleSue!

It's Mrs Generali's (ahem)th decade birthday this year. She would like to go skiing, something I don't fancy, so we'll probably go for a long weekend to NZ. I can spend a few days throwing snowballs and making snowmen while she does whatever it is that skiers do.

Bad Joke Alert:
Snowman 1 to Snowman 2: "Is it just me or can you smell carrots?"

kabayiri

michaels wrote: »

The NP summer party this year may just be on Bugslet.....

No, that would be if Bugs had said "I buy over 4000 bud lites a week"

Generali

kabayiri wrote: »

Re: the doctors strike. I wonder if there is a bigger power play going on. If the government are seen to gain control on Junior Doctors, they might feel encouraged to address other issues in the NHS.

I don't feel the current NHS is remotely sustainable. We are already hearing about cases of strain in A&E up and down the country.

Expensive care on things like Asbestos cancer won't peak until 2020; by which time the Diabetes epidemic will start to hit home hard.

Is a private-public NHS model all but inevitable?

The NHS model isn't sustainable. I know that British people like to support the fiction that the NHS is The Envy Of The World but it isn't true.

Ask yourself a simple question: If the NHS was the envy of the world, why has no other country copied it?

I can call a GP and get a same day appointment. I called my radiotherapist today and was offered a next day appointment. The reason? I generally pay for healthcare when I consume it so I consume in moderation. The fiction that the NHS is 'free' is going to be the undoing of the NHS at best and the undoing of the British state at worst.

mystic_trev

michaels wrote: »

You don't buy petrol very often do you.

No, I have a diesel!:D

I have RAV4. Typical that the first time I buy a 4 wheel drive, there's no wintery weather to try its capabilities in!

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

The NHS model isn't sustainable. I know that British people like to support the fiction that the NHS is The Envy Of The World but it isn't true.

Ask yourself a simple question: If the NHS was the envy of the world, why has no other country copied it?

I can call a GP and get a same day appointment. I called my radiotherapist today and was offered a next day appointment. The reason? I generally pay for healthcare when I consume it so I consume in moderation. The fiction that the NHS is 'free' is going to be the undoing of the NHS at best and the undoing of the British state at worst.

One of the most fascinating discussions I tuned in to some months back was about the emergence of lots of medical technology innovation, much of it in California.

It harked back to the era of microPC development; the days of a young Steve Jobs / Bill Gates.

The telling comment was about where these companies see their breakthrough markets.

It wasn't the UK, with our massive NHS system. It wasn't the USA, with their massive medicaid providers.

No, the testing grounds will be the emerging economies and Africa, where there is no strong medical infrastructure in place.

The reason for this is that they recognise that there will be resistance to change. People see change as a threat to their livelihood.

We see this in the demise of traditional steel making, so why shouldn't we see the same in the demise of traditional medical approaches?

I know this is a bit OT, but we need to understand what the NHS could become before deciding on the best course to get there.

kabayiri

mystic_trev wrote: »

No, I have a diesel!:D

I have RAV4. Typical that the first time I buy a 4 wheel drive, there's no wintery weather to try its capabilities in!

A RAV4 (or my 4x4) is just as incapable as any other car when stuck behind other cars trying to make it up a snowy hill !

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

Posh alert!!



This is the issue I've always had. OK, so you buy one....but those annual site fees alone can be £1-3k. If somebody already spends £1-3k/year on holidays (and more) and wants somewhere they can own to have more holidays - and if there are enough of them to get good use out of it, it's a money saving option.

But £1-3k/year .... is a lot. Plus there's the 10% fee you pay when you sell it.

I know somebody who bought one brand new - hardly ever use it really, as "life" gets in the way .... and, with the depreciation and site fees, it'll have cost them about £7k/year by the time they come to sell it.

Where you live they can be staggeringly cheap ... so the up front cost isn't so much an issue. But I bet those annual site fees weren't far off £1k.

Here, the cheapest caravan would be £130-150k in an unexciting/non-descript spot. £200-250k is pretty typical too.
Indeed, it's cheaper to buy a flat/house within half a mile than a caravan on a park.

Even the annual rent for a wooden beach hut without any water/electricity is about £1k.

Their basic site fees were almost 3.5k a year, on top of that was water rates, electricity, gas bottles, gas checks, electric checks, insurance, admin etc. All told last year it was over 5k.