Wow. Good for you. Don't park on motorways then.
It was behind a local shop in a small village just outside of Slough.
Possibly a PCSO or whatever they are called though, there seem to be quite a lot around that area.
Why do we pay our taxes?
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It was behind a local shop in a small village just outside of Slough.
Possibly a PCSO or whatever they are called though, there seem to be quite a lot around that area.
It was behind a local shop in a small village just outside of Slough.
Possibly a PCSO or whatever they are called though, there seem to be quite a lot around that area.
And were you parked illegally?
Yes, why?
Just curious mate.
And a PCSO probably gave you the correct ticket for it - something they can I beleive do (what they can't generally do is respond to emergency calls with the same powers as normal police).
Police (proper) rarely give out parking tickets unless it's very quiet, or there is something else going on that requires the parking rules be obeyed that little bit more than normal (royal visit or something that might require an area to be free of clutter), or you've parked somewhere very silly.
Police (proper) rarely give out parking tickets unless it's very quiet, or there is something else going on that requires the parking rules be obeyed that little bit more than normal (royal visit or something that might require an area to be free of clutter), or you've parked somewhere very silly.
Associate
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got it in one
Police Attacks: Officer Down
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009pjnc.shtml
watch this link, check how the law protects officers and look up plea bargaining and see why it would be futile for the police to do anything for minor problems
Associate
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The cops are doing their jobs as the lawmakers have set them, the problem is the laws are to deal with rational people, so a normal person will accept a fine etc and pay it. the scum of the planet dont care and will not pay the fine and just continue to terrorise whoever they wish. alas that the police cannot give the scum a good beatin
Not even close, most rational Brits will tell you we don't have many roads policing officers these days, so it's always a good thing when you do see one (unless you're doing something wrong).
You don't know what you're talking about.
You do realise that is fimed over many months, following dedicated Traffic Units. I am guessing this is the reason why there are a lot of Roads Policing Officers on the program!
The reason I keep getting drawn back to this forum is that it has such an entertaining cross section of wildly uninformed viewpoints. Mine included.
Tax is one of those unpleasant things in life, like taking a dump. You might not like doing it, but try *not* doing it for a while and see what happens.
Andrew McP
Just so we're clear, the position that tax is legalised theft doesn't necessarily lead to the idea that we shouldn't pay any taxes at all. If the government restricted itself only to the necessary, and delivered them with efficiency, it's likely they wouldn't have to use threats of force and coercion to collect revenue. Instead, like any service provider, people would happily pay for the services provided at the state's rates.
Unfortunately, that's very far from how things work in this country. I know the cash taken off me by the state could be better spent providing services/support for others outside the state structure.
The american healthcare system is very good, better than ours, provided you have some form of decent healthcare policy.
Personally I'd rather have better, but not necessarily universal, healthcare, than poor but available to everyone healthcare, and to claim the american healthcare system is poor based on the fact that it's not universal is pretty flawed. Comparing the actual treatment offered, I know where I'd rather fall ill, and it's not the UK.
By your logic I should have to accept a poorer standard of care just so everyone else can have an equally poor standard of care. I know socialism spreads the pain, but I really don't think it's a good model to go by, especially where healthcare is concerned.
Ideally, what we really want is a system that does both, there are a few, but they are all insurance based with independant hospitals rather than outdated and inefficient state run monoliths, they are just better regulated than the US system in terms of mandating a minimum cover level and a minimum cost for that cover.
A popular myth, and easily debunked.
Even Americans with access to their stupidly overpriced healthcare have learned to their disgust that it still doesn't match the UK (let alone the rest of Europe). It also performs poorly against non-European nations like Australia.
Thus:
Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries' health systems.
Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.
The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The inclusion of physician survey data also shows the U.S. lagging in adoption of information technology and use of nurses to improve care coordination for the chronically ill.
[...]
For all countries, responses indicate room for improvement. Yet, the other five countries spend considerably less on health care per person and as a percent of gross domestic product than does the United States.
Source.
That's just one study. There are plenty more, from other organisations - and they all prove the same point.
It's interesting to note that those who are quickest to praise the US system are usually people who've never actually had to live with it. My sister in law is a Yank, and she knows from experience just how pathetic it really is.
False dichotomy.
Who said anything about socialism? The UK doesn't have a socialist model.
Just a small point, underperforming relative to other countries is not what I'm talking about. It appears that the question in the study linked isn't about healthcare quality, but about healthcare quality versus cost, and the rankings are as such. I'm talking about straight medical results among those treated in the US vs the UK (discounting those not treated due to access issues). It is also worth noting that as a lot of what is in that report is opinion based, expectation will have an effect on how people rate their medical facilities. If you expect complete crap and get ok, you might rate it good, whereas if you expect the best, and only get ok, you'll probably rate it crap...
It's also interesting looking at the methodology of the report and the purpose of the site. Phone surveys everywhere but the USA, mail surveys in the USA mean that selection bias is going to be an issue, they are asking people to self rate, which works with what I said above, it's not grading on a consistant scale and so on.
Try telling that to a heart attack patient in the UK vs the US. 3 years wait for a bypass, during which time the patient gets worse, leading to a lower long term survival rate in the UK against getting that bypass pretty much immediately in the US after your first attack. I know which I prefer in that situation...
No it isn't, the NHS provides a poorer level of absolute care (as opposed to relative) than the US, but provides it for everyone. The US system provides better levels of absolute care for those that have access to it, but is not accessible to everyone. So it's a perfectly valid point if the choice is exclusively between the US and UK systems. I did address the idea that you can have both, but I also pointed out that none of the countries that provide both have a system like ours.
On top of that, it's also worth noting the stated purpose of the site
So it would appear to be a pressure group for change in the USA, so I would be reluctant to take their study as entirely bias free in it's purpose and questions.
Are you sure? The NHS seems to be a classic socialist model. Money taken under duress, controlled and distributed by the state and then offered back to the people as if it's some sort of favour.
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No, it's not just about quality vs. cost. Read the article. It judges all systems on "quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives". It is not simply a "bang for buck" comparison. Read the article.
The average wait for an NHS patient is 1 year, and he/she has the option to go private if the queue is taking too long. So your scenario is a "worst case" one (which you'd like us to believe is the norm) and in any case quite unlikely.
Oh, and those US waiting times... another myth, I'm delighted to say:
Waiting times in U.S. hospitals and clinics are becoming so lengthy that even one of the nation's biggest insurers, Aetna, has admitted to its investors that the U.S. healthcare system is "not timely" and patients diagnosed with cancer wait "over a month" for needed medical care, said two leading organizations of doctors and nurses recently
[...]
A Commonwealth Fund study of six highly industrialized countries, the U.S., and five nations with national health systems, Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, found waiting times were worse in the U.S. than in all the other countries except Canada. And, most of the Canadian data so widely reported by the U.S. media is out of date, and misleading, according to PNHP and CNA/NNOC
Source.
In order to arrive at your conclusion you must avoid comparing like with like. You're comparing best practice private American healthcare with standard NHS healthcare. That's not a valid comparison. Overall, the UK fares better - as do plenty of other nations.
One thing puzzles me: if you're so fond of the American way, why aren't you living there?
Have you been watching too much Fox? Or have you finally managed to tune into Bill O'Reilly on longwave?
I ask because you don't actually appear to understand socialism, and your flawed "definition" sounds exactly like the nonsense spewed by right-wing American radio jocks.Under a socialist model, there would be no private medical care whatsoever. All services would be owned and run by the state, and privatisation would be prohibited. The economy would be centrally planned, there would be no private ownership of property, and capitalism would be something that foreigners did.
Notice that this is not the system currently extant in the UK.
This is called "taxation"; a crucial component of the capitalist system. There is no "duress" (money is taken under the auspices of a pre-estalished social contract: you use the services, you pay the price) and people frequently receive tax refunds (which would not be the case if taxation was merely legalised theft; after all, what thief repays his victims?)
Incidentally, under our capitalist taxation system, the richest members of society are the ones best equipped to lower their taxable income. Do a little research and you will find that they are the ones who regularly pay the least amount of tax.
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I have, and the full pdf, and I stand by what I said. It's not comparing anything other than people's opinions and the costs involved, it's using different methodologies leading to different sample validities between the countries, and the foundation's bias is showing through in the research.
Is that the full wait from initial GP consultation to final surgery?
That article refers back to the same source for much of it's information, so forgive me if I'm skeptical.
Are you saying you wouldn't desire the best case scenarios for your healthcare? We could go into comparing private UK care, but that would really make the NHS look pretty bad. The UK doesn't fair that well on a global scale, the reality is that both systems are not great, there is massive room for improvement in both, but only by looking at the good points of both can we find that improvement approach. The american system, when it's working at the best, is superior to the care provided by the NHS in the UK, when it's at it's worst, you don't get any healthcare at all. In the UK, we just get mediocre healthcare all the time. Personally I struggle to accept the idea that we should praise a consistantly mediocre system.
Mainly because I'd miss my family too much.
Have you been watching too much Fox? Or have you finally managed to tune into Bill O'Reilly on longwave?
Under a socialist model, there would be no private medical care whatsoever. All services would be owned and run by the state, and privatisation would be prohibited. The economy would be centrally planned, there would be no private ownership of property, and capitalism would be something that foreigners did.
Notice that this is not the system currently extant in the UK.
Socialist aspects do not require a full socialist model. The NHS is a socialist aspect, especially in it's traditional form.
If there's no duress involved, how can I opt out of paying taxes for the services I don't use, or alter the way my money is spent in leiu of taxation? Why do I get taxed extra for my private medical care?
That can be solved by simplifying the tax system, we could simplify the state while we're at it if you want
Even when people have a decent healthcare policy some still don't get treated. Some people die because insurance companies insist that someone goes to a specific hospital in an emergency situation.
Which I wasn't doing. It costs far more and the practices of insurance companies mean people are denied treatment even when they have a policy. It's not just because it's not universal coverage.
Well no I never said anything of the sort, and you can still go private if you want. With the uk system everyone gets a good level of healthcare and those who can afford it have the option to go private and get even better care.
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Soldato
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This has gone a bit off topic, but what the heck. In a documentary on Radio4 last year the NHS was described as one of the best value for money systems on the planet. (Not by journalists, by experts in the field). Nobody could ever claim it was perfect, but given that demand for healthcare assistance is almost infinite and funds aren't, I think they do the best they can.
Apart from when it comes to cleaning, obviously. The Thatcherite free market killed an awful lot of patients in recent decades. Still, the cleaning bill went down, so who cares, right?
The USA is, as ever, a great place to be rich or have great healthcare insurance. But if you're poorer and don't read all the small print, you end up dead or bankrupt. Most bankruptcies in the USA are as a result of healthcare costs, and they spend over twice as much per head of population as we do... a *vast* amount of money. Yet the overall health of their nation is no better... and worse for the poor.
Andrew McP
Apart from when it comes to cleaning, obviously. The Thatcherite free market killed an awful lot of patients in recent decades. Still, the cleaning bill went down, so who cares, right?
The USA is, as ever, a great place to be rich or have great healthcare insurance. But if you're poorer and don't read all the small print, you end up dead or bankrupt. Most bankruptcies in the USA are as a result of healthcare costs, and they spend over twice as much per head of population as we do... a *vast* amount of money. Yet the overall health of their nation is no better... and worse for the poor.
Andrew McP