Meanwhile - prescription charges

[Good old]

Hopefully Boris Johnson.

Could say he already has.

[papasmurf]

I did not mind when the bodies were lying in the gutters, but lately they have started blocking the pavement. One of these days someone will fall over them and have a nasty accident

Hopefully Boris Johnson.

[Borchester]

That was a figure forced out of the DWP some years ago. It will be a lot higher by now.

I did not mind when the bodies were lying in the gutters, but lately they have started blocking the pavement. One of these days someone will fall over them and have a nasty accident

[papasmurf]

Hasn't someone taken you apart for that pile of bodies in the gutters bullshit already

That was a figure forced out of the DWP some years ago. It will be a lot higher by now.

[johnofgwent]

I have to disagree because of the contracted out "assessments" during IDS's time at the DWP 118000 people died. That did not happen on Browns watch.

Hasn't someone taken you apart for that pile of bodies in the gutters bullshit already

Frankly, the Covid tzar could do with IDS then because he could disappear two years worth of COVID casualties ....

[Sheepy]

Cobblers. It is an established fact that even working people are having to rely on food banks. If you want to be yet another one of those Tories in denial and be a part of the problem, go ahead, but you are only fooling yourself and those who want to be fooled. And Labour has not been in power for 12 years now.

And Blair was never my darling, you should know that by now. I spend more time attacking Blairites than I do your lot,

I will say one thing for old Labour which is lost in the mists of time they did set out to change the Westminster way of things and did manage it for a while, until the social misfits took over. 

[papasmurf]

IDS wasn't the author of Britain's Arbeit Mach Frei policy. Brown was. I should know, I made the best part of 100k rewriting the various pensions and savings modules for a dozen of our largest pension companies every time he opened his mouth.

I have to disagree because of the contracted out "assessments" during IDS's time at the DWP 118000 people died. That did not happen on Browns watch. 

[srb7677]

Oh this just gets more and more ridiculous. Do away this the NHS. It's a redundant, inefficient money wasting inadequate monolith.

Try winning an election with that one, .

It costs substantially less than the US system and actually covers everyone at the same time. 

[johnofgwent]

Cobblers. It is an established fact that even working people are having to rely on food banks. If you want to be yet another one of those Tories in denial and be a part of the problem, go ahead, but you are only fooling yourself and those who want to be fooled. And Labour has not been in power for 12 years now.

And Blair was never my darling, you should know that by now. I spend more time attacking Blairites than I do your lot,

Well, she's right about Brown though.

He has taken 20% compound from every occupational (private/personal) pension plan since 1997 when he destroyed the until then sacred principle that every penny a pension fund accumulates for you is tax free because the pension funds are taxed when you receive them and anything left on your death royally screwed for tax before being allowed to be part of your estate. It's called abolition of Advance Corporation Tax relief and it was done to bolster Blair's war chest at the expense of every long term investment in shares for the dividends they would return by every pension fund in the country.

And he engineered the changes in benefits Iain Duncan Smith so happily grabbed and continued with 

IDS wasn't the author of Britain's Arbeit Mach Frei policy. Brown was. I should know, I made the best part of 100k rewriting the various pensions and savings modules for a dozen of our largest pension companies every time he opened his mouth.

[papasmurf]

Cobblers. It is an established fact that even working people are having to rely on food banks.

Quite, it used to be 15% some years ago, I suspect it is now a lot more.

[srb7677]

Oh this just gets more and more ridiculous. Do away this the NHS. It's a redundant, inefficient money wasting inadequate monolith.
Rubbish. As I remember it Gordon Brown set it up so even those in reasonable jobs were owed benefits. Who benefitted? Employers who simply gave up paying because they knew that Welfare wold pick up the slack. The theory being that the more people you can make State reliant the more votes. Labour has always operated in the same way. When Labour was last finally pushed out power I believe a third of the electorate were in State employ in some way or another. Blame your darling Blair and his sidekick.

Cobblers. It is an established fact that even working people are having to rely on food banks. If you want to be yet another one of those Tories in denial and be a part of the problem, go ahead, but you are only fooling yourself and those who want to be fooled. And Labour has not been in power for 12 years now.

And Blair was never my darling, you should know that by now. I spend more time attacking Blairites than I do your lot,

[johnofgwent]

Sorry I don't understand.

Research the history of the NHS.

When first created in 1948 everything was free at the point of need. The entire point of the NHS was that it was supposed to be free to all, paid for from taxation (I'm not going into old arguments on which taxes were hypothecated to pay for it, that's a distraction)

The whole rationale behind Labours rise to power post war was their propaganda regarding the establishment of all sorts of improvements the working class deserved because the working class had been slaughtered like cattle in two world wars 

Nye Bevans first challenge to the socialists who elected him was to explain the massive bribes he had to hand out to the doctor's he had to persuade to join his NHS.

A friend of mine now long retired once lived, when I first met him, in the doctors house in Surgery Road, Blaina. He had been freelancing for far longer than I.

The Old Surgery as it was called stood in two acres of land atop a hill that gave panoramic views out over the Ebbw valley. It was so high up it floated above the fog of coal dust and smog the rest of Blaina coughed in daily as they went about their lives hewing coal out of Cwm and Nantyglo.

It was a mansion whose sitting, living and dining rooms were each the size of my whole house. It's heating bills were fearsome or would have been had there not been a right in the covenant of the land to chop down trees in the nearby forest that even the Forestry Commission had to accept still stood 

It was built in the 1920s before planning permission was needed and was something out of a Poirot murder. Hell, it had six rooms on the first floor for the bloody servants.....

And it was NOTHING compared to the mansion built half way along HOSPITAL road owned by a surgeon who worked at said (private) hospital

These were the people Bevan had to bribe to make his fledgeling NHS work.

Within weeks, months at most, it became glaringly obvious he'd royally screwed up. And first spectacles, then prescriptions, and then dentistry, became not remotely free at all. 

Hence my comment. The NHS was built on a lie.

[srb7677]

This is on top of the clawback in state pensions, which  cost me 1 year and my wife 6 years, a total of £56,000 gone.

Well when the Labour party was still something I wanted to be a part of, we had a policy of compensating people like your wife for that. Sadly, we didn't win. And you'll get nothing out of Starmer's lot.

I think most of us now have sufferered or will suffer from pension clawback, though the extent of it is obviously greater for women who previously had the right to retire 5 years earlier than men which has been removed.

Yet even as a man I am having two years of pensions stolen from me. When I left school at 16 and started paying tax and NI contributions, I like everyone else was told that when I reached 65 I could retire based upon those NI contributions. In the meantime of course the goalposts have been shifted. I now have to wait until I am 67 - assuming they don't change it again before I get there.

This is often justified on the basis of the supposed fact that we are all going to be living longer. And yet we are constantly hearing of obesity epidemics, diabetes epidemics, and so on, not to mention covid now too, all of which seems to suggest to me that average life expectancy is likely in the long run to fall, not rise.

[T00ts]

Oh this just gets more and more ridiculous. Do away this the NHS. It's a redundant, inefficient money wasting inadequate monolith.

Indeed. Many of the poorest people these day are in work. Working people needing welfare support outnumber actual out of work jobseekers. Some of the working poor are even being driven to use food banks.

This is what 40 years of Thatcherite economics has done to this country. And yet taxation levels are higher as a percentage of GDP than at any time since the 50s. Where is all the pigging money going? I suspect fraud and evasion by the elites on an industrial scale.

Rubbish. As I remember it Gordon Brown set it up so even those in reasonable jobs were owed benefits. Who benefitted? Employers who simply gave up paying because they knew that Welfare wold pick up the slack. The theory being that the more people you can make State reliant the more votes. Labour has always operated in the same way. When Labour was last finally pushed out power I believe a third of the electorate were in State employ in some way or another. Blame your darling Blair and his sidekick.

[srb7677]

Working is no fail safe from not being able to meet one's basic needs . If it was the welfare system would not being covering the rent of millions.

Indeed. Many of the poorest people these days are in work. Working people needing welfare support outnumber actual out of work jobseekers. Some of the working poor are even being driven to use food banks.

This is what 40 years of Thatcherite economics has done to this country. And yet taxation levels are higher as a percentage of GDP than at any time since the 50s. Where is all the pigging money going? I suspect fraud and evasion by the elites on an industrial scale.