Hi,

actually, 43% of the total UK population is in full time employment.

40% are outside the working age.

3% are parents at home full time caring for children.

Unsure of figures for part time working.

Unsure of figures for those in higher education.

Cheers,
Malc

I can see how the system is meant to work, and I cannot criticise the service it provides, but I have to criticise the bredth of service it provides. Why do we need to cover all medical needs on the NHS? I know a woman who had breast implants on the NHS because she was deemed to require them to alleviate depression she had over her breast size which had resulted in her repoting she was considering suicide. You are of course right. Everyone can roll out anecdotes that conflict with the common belief that the system is good.

Another common myth is that Scotland are dealing with things differently. In Scotland it is now illegal for hospitals to charge you for parking. The idea being that a relative should not have to pay £10 to visit his wife in hospital every day when she's dying. That's just bullsh!t. The hospitals in Scotland have, for the large part, sold their car parks to the likes of NCP and other firms, and now you have to pay to park on private land and you have no right of recourse. This is NHS corruption in direct contradiction of the intent of Government Laws.

And of course in the UK, every time the NHS does F stuff up, it is whitewashed, hidden, not divulged even under the Freedom of Information Act, and you can't sue your doctor/surgeon for millions like you can in the States.

Also, you cannot justify the health service cost based on %GDP. %GDP in no way measures wastage, or the amount of £ per head of the population that it costs to provide. Nor does it differentiate between who earns to provide that money, and who does not. The NHS is meant to be provided from National Insurance which is only paid for by those who get off their arses (and their corresponding employer's contributions). It is not paid for by company taxes, import taxation, VAT, or anything that ammounts to GDP.

I've had good service and poor service from the NHS, but I cannot complain. I get prescriptions for £5 a shot. My kids will no doubt get free dental care etc. But the NHS is very much linked to Social Security and the Welfare State, and is just as much in the grip of Unionism, and bled by the Jeremy Kyle sections of our society.

lawrenson wrote:Hi,

I noticed John Kovalic got a meat smoker from his wife for Valentines Day.

Wonder what she's trying to tell him...

Cheers,
Malc

I read into that 'bone smoker'.    Must be a dirty mind. Didn't know you could buy machines to smoke meats in. Couldn't imagine wanting to own one.

RaisedFromTheDead wrote:
She's tired of smoking his meat.
I think the U.S. collapse will come much sooner than 20 years. Within 10, possibly 5.

The world as we know it will end in 2012!  Haven't you seen the movie?    

My mistake. 4 in 10 of the population.  

The Govt. define full-time work as anything over 20 hours a week. That's based on the Dept. of Work & Pensions guidelines and the Depatment of Social Security's emplyment criteria. If someone works more than 20 hours a week spread over any number of jobs, they are employed full-time as far as the UK Govt. is concerned (or at least as far as their administrative bodies are concerned). At least that was the case in April 2009 when last I looked. It may well have been massaged in a different direction since then depending on the political requirements of the time.

At the end of the day, we're talking about statistics, and we all know that statistics and their presentation are horse sh!t. Nor do I read newspapers. They seem, for the most part, to be full of it too.

Maybe Social Security set the bar at 20 hours to pay less people benefits which is probably a good thing. I can't imagine the Govt. definig it in law, because if they did it would cripple the system and prevent the manipulation of data. It would also set a precedent against which facts and figures could be compared. No Govt. is ever that stupid. It's all beaurocratic BS anyhoo.

RaisedFromTheDead wrote:Yes, but Obaminable pitched his campaign to the illegals and handouters.
Prufrock is right, and the amusing part is that no one in the U.S. seems to be able to even conceive of the country falling apart. There's a HUGE desert somewhere with many, many heads buried in it's sand.
Nations rise and fall. It's been happening since civilization was created. We WILL collapse, it is inevitable, and when we do, the world will suffer greatly. We are like a cow riddled with ticks, and the ticks have gotten to the point where the cow will be bled dry. When that happens, the ticks will starve.

Consider this:

Affluence can be the beginning of the end of a great civilization. Consider this famous outline, attributed to Alexander Tytler (1748-1813) of the sequential stages of a civilization:


From Bondage to Spiritual Faith,
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage,
From Courage to Liberty,
From Liberty to Abundance,
From Abundance to Selfishness,
From Selfishness to Complacency,
From Complacency to Apathy,
From Apathy to Dependency,
From Dependency back into Bondage.

Where do you figure we fall in this list of stages.  Now consider that every democracy after it has collapsed has been replaced by a dictatorship.

RaisedFromTheDead wrote: Yes, I know, 12-21-2012. A few days after I turn 45.

Funny, we don't take the Mayans' advice for anything else (I mean, except for...you know...tortillas and beans), but we can still worry about 12/21/2012.

If the Mayans were so good at predicting the future why aren't they still around, winning the lottery every month?

FormCritic wrote:
If the Mayans were so good at predicting the future why aren't they still around,

They cleared off to another planet when they knew this one was spiralling towards its doom...