The Tories are gonna get in, it's inevitable do you care? Is there an upside?

[TheDullWitch]

Oh why not have the election NOW. Let the buggers get in, show their true colours, become universally loathed, then get kicked out after one term. Come on, let's get on with it!

MissingMy it's not just about how many houses are above that is it?

Before you even start you have to remove all those whose parents are in rented accom. or whose houses have been sold for eg social care (another debate I know... think it's still searchable from a few weeks ago)

Wouldn't surprise me if the remaining fugure was 2% tbh though I have no way of knowing.

ILoveMy I hope to goodness health provision at maternity level doesn't drop around here- I am certain it would mean dead babies (and Mums too). The month I had ds4 (at home) our hospital was declared as under sp[ecial review for amternity, bssed upon maternal deaths previously- a few here considered as preventable.

As someone who ahs had eclampsia becuase of refusal (not in Wales, before we moved here) to take symptoms seriously this did rather shake me- I had been due to have a sweep the week it was released to the news, and DS4 was rushhed into SCBU (false alarm- benign heart murmur) at one day. They've just hoiked themselves out after massive investment in miidwife recruitment etc (and really needed it- culdn't beleive the state of the wards) and I don't think it would have ben manageable under the sort of budgets we had 3when I was a trainee nurse back in the early nineties.

Am not biased on this one, as MIL's house will take her estate over the inheritance tax threshold. Dh and SIL will, however (assuming MIL hasn't left it all to the RSPCA or something) be getting £££££££££ that they have not earned. Their parents did.

'We will reform the way drugs are priced so that all new treatments that are clinically effective are made available, ending the situation whereby cancer drugs that are routinely available in the rest of Europe and not provided in this country '

ar they scraping NICE then? Yikes! Typical- I finally met the Ed PSych on the NICE asd diagnosis committee (due 2011)- goodness knows what they'd replace that with then.

Not biased either LOL_ parents in a ocuncil house, MIL has disowned us and FIL will leave us his half if he dies before his GF buuit as she is 25 years his junior- unlikely. And even if they did it's mortgaged to the hilt LOL

Nah, no way they will ditch NICE, would be far too expensive to allow the drugs companies to have a free for all.

Suspect they are talking about tweaking the drug price mechanism.

Riven/Edam,

Take the point - you're both right that the offspring haven't actually earned the money. Having said that, though, when the parents have already been taxed on all income and capital gains once, and have used their net income to save up and buy a house, it seems a little heavy-handed to tax them again when they want to pass it on to their children.

After all, as our children haven't earned it, why not just sign the entire value of any assets over to the government when we die?...

I thought you didnt pay cap agins on ytour own home, was more for portfolio owners?

God forbid the tories get in. It's each for his own at that point.
Best we (ie any one with a social conscience) can hope for is a hung parliment.
Agree Brown is a sitting Duck but Labour cut off their grass roots when Tony and palls pulled off their New Conservative Labour coup so there's no one rising in the ranks to replace him.
Revolution anyone?

From Government website:

'Your own home - Private Residence Relief
When you sell or dispose of your home you will usually be entitled to Private Residence Relief. You don't need to claim this, it is given automatically. This means that if it was your only or main home, you usually won?t have to pay any Capital Gains Tax.
'

Phew I thought we'd had dodgy legal advice a long time ago there!

Re. NICE - edam's right - they're talking about keeping it but negotiating with the drug companies about prices - payment by results, so if the drug is not shown to have huge efficacy (as is often the case with the borderline new cancer drugs) the drug company will drop the price accordingly. Fair idea I suppose but what chances are there of the drug companies going along with that one?

'why not just sign the entire value of any assets over to the government when we die?... ' - there are lots of socialists who advocate exactly this! Inherited wealth is seen as one of the pillars of inequality.

On NICE, policywonk/edam are right. It's more about trying to get better value for money spent. I actually think there is a fair chance that Pharmaceutical/Medical Device companies will fall into line. The UK is one of the five largest pharma markets in Europe (Germany, France, Spain, Italy are the others), and the chance of losing reimbursement for such a large revenue stream will make them think twice.

In many areas, companies are already preparing themselves for these kind of market conditions. Health Economics and Pricing/Reimbursement now takes place from very early in the drug development timeline to ensure that efficacy is easier to prove.

That's good to know; so much confusion alreadya round ASD DX and I could see the furture advancements slipping away rather rapidly.......

I don't particularly want people's family homes tbh (although I do love winding up my sister-with-1-child-in-a-5-bed-house that come the revolution itb will all be mine), but for the system we have for housing to cope (HB, etc) then those who profit (and often go on to rent them out and get the HB after all) should realise that in order to maintain the status quo a certain amount needs to be ploughed in by the state, hence taxes. The argument that tax upon tax is silly given that we pay that every time we spend our wages on food (VAT), petrol (fuel duty) etc. It's part of life, and inevitable.

I would never ever ever ever vote tory. All governments lose favour eventually and we get sick of them and then we vote them out and the opposition in and on it goes. That is democracy thankfully. But when I think of the worst that the Thatcher years brough us, a fear grips my heart at the thought of going back to that I'm alright jack mentality and the obsession with attaianing wealth and material goods. . I'd like to give the lib dems a chance but everybody says its a wasted vote. Not if more people do it its not!

'I'd like to give the lib dems a chance but everybody says its a wasted vote. Not if more people do it its not!'

Exactly

but then DH is from Paddy Ashdown territory so he is a big, bg fan of the LD's and making the effort to get them in regardless

Ah Now Paddy A- there a man who

Come back Paddy, we neeeeed you

Electoral turnout in the last election was 61% - i.e. 39% of the population didn't bother to vote.
Labour won the election with 35% of the vote; Conservatives 32%, LD 22%.
In other words, more people "voted" for nobody at all than voted for any of the main partes.
Never say a vote for xxs is a wasted vote - the non-voting contingency have the potential power to elect just about any party of their choosing.
I always think that if you fail to vote at an election, you forfeit the moral right to complain about the government that results.

hear hear! Does anyone REMEMBER Maggie Thatcher?

Hey, my first post and my blodd's alreay up! This is good!

Here's how I'd sort the NHS out:

Make CEOs effectively stay in post for a minimum of 3 years to actually see out the knock on effects of their crazy 'blue sky thinking'.

People see the NHS as 'free' thus don't value it.

Charge people for failing to keep medical appointments. What I'd do is set up a unit whose job it was to chase non-attenders for payment. They'd send out a 'please explain' which the non attender had to fill out in order to have that fee waived. You'd get some Booker Prize winning fiction in the responses, most of which would indeed allow that person 'off the hook' BUT I bet you that person would think twice about failing to keep or cancel their NEXT appointment, so would their family and mates once they'd realised the NHS was serious!!

I'd charge the financially able a small sum to visit their GP, a fee that'd reduce or stop with a subsequent follow up.

Put financial limits on payouts. VAST sums of NHS money go on defending litigation. The red top papers in particular engender a ridiculous sense of entitlement in their readership thus IF something goes not according to plan in a health care setting, SOMEONE must be made to pay, regardless of whether that event was extremely unlikely to occur or a genuine accident..

We all gripe about 'nurses with clipboards'- well, we got the NHS we demanded: One where absolutely EVERYTHING is accounted for, NOTHING can be said to have happened unless that something is recorded. That requires clipboards. So when 'Something Goes Wrong' the paper trail can be trawled up in order for us to sue the hospital, as we are safe in the knowledge that the health authority will settle out of court because they can't afford to fight it and maybe lose.

MRSA? C. Diff? Inevitable in a system that only values 'through-put' as a performance indicator.

Inject some common sense back into what is offered. Re the issue of litigation, every day 95 year olds are put through the indignity and trauma of invasive diagnostic tests because the NHS doesn't DARE say 'No' because they fear the relatives lawyer IF it transpires that great grandma DID have undiagnosed bowel cancer at the time of her death. The fact that no one would have treated it in a frail 95 year old is seen as neither here nor there. Spend that 'Diagnostics' money on better Geriatric, palliative care. Pay those workers more.

Get rid of these stupid 'Patient Led NHS' initiatives. I don't want my NHS to be patient led :- that way lies spectacular self-interest and blinkered, short-term knee jerk.

Finally, please bear in mind that even the government recognised that key health care workers (amongst others) didn't benefit particularly well from the bull market of the past few years: that's where the Shared Ownership Scheme came from. Your 'pay' is a combination of several thing: actual back pocket money, pensions, terms and conditions. The average NHS worker earns 'not much' but gets an OK pension deal. If you want to hack into that pension deal, expect NHS workers to demand more pay to compensate.

"I'd charge the financially able a small sum to visit their GP, a fee that'd reduce or stop with a subsequent follow up."

So tax people for the upkeep of the NHS, and then charge them again to use it? Where would your cut-off be in terms of being 'financially able'? Surely you must see that charging for GPS undermines the entire point of the NHS service - to have a decent level of healthcare for ALL regardless of income.

People on higher incomes already pay more into the NHS anyway through higher taxation.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to fight infections within hospitals, and reduce litigation costs, would be to bring back matrons...