h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, KB. On the assumption that you are not, I will say that yes, it is absolutely possible. In some cases it is a desperate attempt to control what is going on, sometimes it is an attempt to boost an economy so that the people are less likely to join extremist groups against us.

"Army warns Olympic Games recovery will take two years"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/13/army-olympic-games-recovery-two-years?newsfeed=true

Naturally, we weren't given this sort of story during the Olympics.

Did you read that? It's basically a PR puff-piece saying "Look how well we did, no more cuts please". It's taken a monumental piece of twisting by the Grauniad to turn that into a negative.

But I suppose if you're looking for negatives ...

And as for Foreign Aid, there's Aid & there's Aid isn't there? Every drought in East Africa or flood in Bangladesh leads to increases in refugees coming to Britain so it makes financial sense to fund wells and flood defences there. Similarly, lack of finance for schools in Pakistan leaves the way clear for religious extremists to set up madrassas where kids are taught to hate; British money has been used to buy text books instead of Korans and to hire qualified teachers rather than illiterate thugs.

It's not as if it's anything new - the British Empire wasn't maintained by a massive military; it was kept going with threats, promises and huge financial bungs. The first Afghan wars came about because we stopped giving tribal chiefs backhanders to keep trade routes open. All the money spent building Indian railways in the 19th Century would technically be classed as aid nowadays, but who can doubt that it benefited Britain?

Isn't the correct comparison unit when complaining about government spending "kidney dialysis machines" anyway?

You're a few decades out of date. Dialysis machines are smaller and cheaper than ever, so they're not the first choice for comparison. Cancer drugs are the new thing, I think, not least because Cameron got an ear-bashing on the radio the other day from a woman who was being denied drugs that would save her life, purely on grounds of cost, the same week it was announced that we wouldn't be reducing, but would rather be increasing, our aid to foreigners. She was rightly upset about that.

>>It's basically a PR puff-piece saying "Look how well we did, no more cuts please".

Yes, I agree, but all I said was we weren't given this sort of story during the Olympics.

The thing is about these "Thur no' gien me ma drugs" memes though is we don't actually hear the full story. As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), there are very few wonder drugs that actually "cure" terminal conditions. Most seem to have slightly different side effects or have quite marginal outcomes - living six months as a shuffling, pain-ridden vegetable rather than four. The pharmaceutical marketing departments do a wonderful job of promoting their products - "New improved Aspirin DoublePlus - cures you before you knew you were sick!" - and if you are a terminal patient or related to one, you're going to scour Google looking for these products.

The NHS simply can't afford all these snake oil remedies and one of the reasons they can't is we have tens of thousands of people coming to the UK from the third world partly to benefit from free health care. It would be far cheaper to set up free public health programmes abroad, where wage and materiel costs are lower than it is to treat them in the UK where we also have to feed, clothe and house them.

What was one of the major adverts in the Olympic opening ceremony? "Look at Britain's Free Health Care!"

I've wondered about that. Our universal free-at-the-point-of-need healthcare is one of the things that Britons can be justly proud of, and so I see no problem with it featuring in the opening ceremony. It is possibly the nation's greatest post-war achievement, and it's worth showing it off to the rest of the world.

I seem to recall that one of the arguments against Obama's health reforms in the US was that they would end up with a system like the NHS. I guess that it could therefore be seen as a poke at the Americans - "If you did have a health care system like the NHS then it could be just as brilliant as ours!"


Geggs

The NHS is not free , it´s funded with the money of British taxpayers.

It catched my attention that the NSH was presented as one of the jewel
of the country when, as it happening in Spain, is intended to be privatized as other social services. I guessed that maybe they did that to justify the privatization, look, it´s so good that we are going to make it better.

For terminal people there already exist drugs to treat them, and that woman on the radio, whatever she was demanding, she clearly missed the attack mentioning the foreing aid. The cuts simply musn´t affect the NSH. And if it´s snake oil her demand, doctors will know what to tell her.


swl, the only health tourism I know is that coming from Europe to Spain, mainly Alicante and that area, to have surgical ops. The Spanish NH is one of the more extensive in the world. It´s also cost efficient, our professionals are acknowledged everywhere.
But now, with the cuts... let´s start to say goodbye to all that and hello to those who know no limits to make profit at the expenses of devastating their own country services. That is the path your NHS is getting too.

I find funny the coincidences of your arguments with those here in Spain, "a free for all system that attract immigrants" that comes from rightwingers.
I really find hard to believe that those Africans who cross the strait of Gibraltar in a precarious boat , after they have paid a lot of money to the mafias and crossed half Africa come to Europe to have free health, in the case they don´t die in the way or get stuck in the frontier of Ceuta and Melilla.
Well, I think that at least they deserve a bit o attention, health is a human right after all. A civilised country like yours or mine can afford to attend immigrants.

I'm not sure how the army will ever recover after two weeks patrolling the beach volleyball and munching their way through 21,056 litres of vanilla ice cream.

But I digress.

Maria<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>the point

Maria said: "The NHS is not free , it´s funded with the money of British taxpayers"

Geggs previously said "free-at-the-point-of-need".

Can you spot the difference children?

Yes, that's right, it's all the bits after the first hyphen. The absolutely critical part the clearly describes the NHS as being not free, but free AT THE POINT OF NEED.

Of course, if you have an axe to grind of your own, you need to be able to close your eyes immediately after reading the word "free", and ignore all the rest, so that you can pretend you've got a point.

This is called a "straw man" argument. Basically, it requires to you lie about what someone else has said, then vehemently disagree with the lie you've just told.

For instance, Maria said that there should be absolutely unrestricted immigration permitted. Maria, that's a completely stupid thing to say, and so obviously wrong - there's no way our economy, or Spain's, can possibly cope with unrestricted immigration. It was completely ridiculous of you to suggest it. What's that? That's not what you said at all? You never even said anything like that?

See how that works?

So , you think that the hospital give you services for free? You don´t think that you are receiving a service you have already paid for it with your taxes?

How many are those who received completely free? surely less than those who pay taxes.

post 31 pretends to be patronising, but dear if you have anything to say, go ahead and say your point in a different way just in case I´m not the only one who has read you wrong.

>>So, you think that the hospital give you services for free?

No, we don't. We absolutely know that our taxes pay for the NHS. This means that, at the point at which we need the NHS to help us, it will, without us having to pay on the door, because we've already paid through our tax.

>>How many are those who received completely free? surely less than those who pay taxes.

Possibly, and I take it as a testament to our humanity that we are willing to help all those in need, regardless of whether they are able to repay our kindness.


Geggs

"So , you think that the hospital give you services for free? "

Not for the first time, I don't even have to bother trying to make you look stupid, because you're doing an excellent job of it on your own.

Read post 32 again.

And again.

And again.

Keep reading it until you understand the idea of "free at the point of need". If you still obtusely cling to the idea that when we say that we mean "free", and that the additional five words are entirely spurious, then you're beyond help.

I do understand that English isn't your first language, but you've been told, carefully, several times and in short words what's being discussed here, and you stubbornly keep saying it's something else. Do, please, try to stop behaving like an idiot.

Wrap it up Hoo, go vent your spleen elsewhere.

Else reread Maria's posts again and...

"How many are those who received completely free? surely less than those who pay taxes"

I was looking for a stat to deal with this, and went here: http://www.agediscrimination.info/statistics/Pages/CurrentUKpopulation.aspx

On that page, I came across the following excellent stat: "Most people in the UK are 43 years old." Really? REALLY? I mean, I'm 43 years old, so that's one anecdotal data point, but really, most people I meet are NOT 43 years old. (I think this means the mode for the data set is 43, but that's not the same as "most people"!)

Anyhoo... onto demolishing the latest nonsense from our Iberian ignoramus...


UK population is roughly 62 million. It is reasonable to assume that in a given year on average every single one of these people will have cause to use the NHS in one form or another.

According to HMRC's own figures(http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/income_tax/table2-1.pdf), there are 29.7 million taxpayers in the UK.

So in summary, 32.3 million people receive their healthcare completely free. 29.7 million pay for everyone. You're welcome, everyone.

So, despite your "surely", you're wrong. Again. Are you learning yet?

Rod: I can get my spleen vented FREE on the NHS!!!

Ooops! I'll go back to lurking, after I've cleaned my keyboard