How much is your Council Tax ?

chillidoggy

And do the bin-wankers chuck it all in the same lorry, like wot they do round here?

richardhomer

Evilmags;381537" said:

[quote="Sambostar;381503"]Well, I agree with you there.  Except maybe that some things can't be measured in money alone.

There is no objective measure of value. Nothing is worth exactly the same to you as it is to me. That is why free, unimpeded interchange is the fundamental bedrock of social cooperation. Money is simply a social institution that evolves like any other. Over many eons it evolved from grain (the story of Joseph and his coat in the bible is a historical example) and settled on gold. It was only when the state left the gold standard and nationalised central banks that you had intervention in money. And given a poundhas lost 98% of its value in less than a century we can see where that is heading.

Just take a minute and think how much cheaper just about everything has become to make. The enormous gains in technology and productivity science gives us every year. Then look at the industrial revolution and the increase in living standards that brought.

No institution on earth, other than the state has the power to stop all of those advances feeding down to society. Yet here we are. 70 years of the state consuming our wealth using the reason and logic free arguments so beloved of Emperorfabulous, Lixarto ect, with ever greater dependency and erosion of liberty. It does not take to much use of reason to see that we should all be much richer.

But because politicians put emotions, sentiment and their own interests above ours, in total negligence of economic science, here we are...[/quote]

Here's Tom with the weather....

Nitefly

chillidoggy said:

And do the bin-wankers chuck it all in the same lorry, like wot they do round here?

Amazingly, no - different wagons for different bins!  Mind you, I don't know what happens when they get it to the depot...

johnnyurq

chillidoggy said:

And do the bin-wankers chuck it all in the same lorry, like wot they do round here?

Is that yonder Osama bin-Wanker and his crew?

Evilmags

No job has a single fixed cost. Telecoms, utilities, airlines all operate vastly more efficiently as private firms. Prices shift all the time and profit drives efficiency. The best example is BUPA which provides superb service at much lower cost than the NHS

BUP

Phil_aka_Pip;381551" said:

@Evilmags you're talking blx about privatisation.

If a job takes an hour to do using £x worth of materials how the hell do you think it can cost less for a privatised business to do the same job AND make a profit. The only way it can work is to reduce the hourly rate (not possible legally if the worker is already on the national minimum), cut the amount of materials or the quality of them, or cut the time spent on the job (ie not do it as thoroughly). 

Phil_aka_Pip

Evilmags said:

No job has a single fixed cost. Telecoms, utilities, airlines all operate vastly more efficiently as private firms. Prices shift all the time and profit drives efficiency. The best example is BUPA which provides superb service at much lower cost than the NHS

BUP

Phil_aka_Pip;381551" said:

@Evilmags you're talking blx about privatisation.

If a job takes an hour to do using £x worth of materials how the hell do you think it can cost less for a privatised business to do the same job AND make a profit. The only way it can work is to reduce the hourly rate (not possible legally if the worker is already on the national minimum), cut the amount of materials or the quality of them, or cut the time spent on the job (ie not do it as thoroughly). 

1st Clause UNTRUE. You can work out how long it takes one cleaner to clean a hospital ward thoroughly and you can cost out the chemicals & tools required to do it. The NHS could do it for the price of that person's pay (+ overheads) + buy the tools & materials in bulk 'cos they've got huge purchasing power. A private cleaning firm won't get the tools as good or as cheap, they have to make a profit, so the corners to cut are obviously quality and/or the cleaner's pay. Both are not acceptable, but an inevitable consequence of privatisation.

I never saw a telco that operated more efficiently than BT. Nor one less inefficient either. They're all as bad.

Utilities are not in the argument because they're monopolies (water) or cartels (energy).

With airlines, they can be inventive about their products and tune them to the marketplace (not as easy when you're selling kWh of lekky), so an airline has more scope for competition. There's no reason why a state-owned airline couldn't compete.

BUPA? well I've been told by more than one source that NHS quality exceeds theirs in terms of the procedures which create a sterile field of operation in a theatre (or it did before half the NHS got privatised and/or before my aunt retired from nursing) so while BUPA may look shinier and more with-it I still think I'd prefer to be operated on by the NHS.

Take your privatisation and especially your PFI and shove it till it makes you scream. Then see if BUPA can help you extract it.

Sambostar

Evilmags said:

No job has a single fixed cost. Telecoms, utilities, airlines all operate vastly more efficiently as private firms. Prices shift all the time and profit drives efficiency. The best example is BUPA which provides superb service at much lower cost than the NHS

OK, I have been humouring you, but honestly, now I know, as much as I would like to agree with you, I know now that, regrettably, you are full of shyte to a degree.  The NHS get the fallout from BUPA when things go awry, that is no secret.  As it operates in the UK, it is a essentially a private enterprise backed up and subsidized by the taxpayer.  Hmmm...sound incredibly familiar, because that is how most private corporate enterprises operate in the UK.  Unaccountable to the public and subsidized by the taxpayer.  Now, if it was full on private healthcare, the cost wouldn't be £18 or £20 a month, it would be more like £200 to £300 a month, like it is in the States. 

In the USA, private healthcare providers spend all their cash on the latest kit, that is NEVER used, just so they can say they are competitive with the next provider.  Meanwhile, the customer suffers in quality of actual care.  It was only recently that Obama introduced new laws that didn't prohibit you from getting healthcare plans should you be initially treated have a debilitating or serious illness reoccurring.  Private healthcare providers essentially act like any other insurer.  If the risk is too great, you can't get cover.  No amount of free market capitalism will fix that without state intervention.

Essentially you are condoning a cull of the sick and poor.

 

As for the NHS being shyte, no private company would ever operate as efficiently, with such small margins as it does for the cost.  It wouldn't happen.

And whilst there is unfettered access to immigrants that live twenty to a house and are willing to work for peanuts in our economy, the rich will never pay the true value and worth for having their shyte cleaned up around them.  Thus we have the minimum wage.  In a closed system, yes, I agree eventually wages will rise and there would be no need for a minimum wage, but the system is open ended.

Respectfully, I don't like the way you bring out the lefty in me, as I think all lefties should be crucified.

Evilmags

You utter lack of any basic understanding of economic theory and the ridiculous straw man arguments above really show.

I remember BT pretty privatisation. Their market was 100%. No money went into development and calls were massively more expensive. Now we have 4G. I can get a phone and number without waiting and without giving bank details. What part of going back to the 1980s would make things better???

I've been in both NHS and private hospitals. There is simply no comparison. If you want to moan about non profit BUPA, Pru health, which is for profit, is even cheaper!!!

The usual sentimental shite at the end of your comment just shows you as a socialist.

Sambostar

Bollocks. 

Sambostar

Bupa is not dealing with an aging population, funding cuts and a unfettered influx of net migration, causing the population to rise by a million every four years.  It is selective.  Oh and I've seen with my own eyes the number of ambulances arriving from Bupa hospitals to A&E so don't tell me I'm wrong.  The veneer might seem a fancy colour but the guts of it are twisted.

Sambostar

I don't have 4G, have copper phone lines and get 0.4Mbps.  Big deal.

Evilmags

It kind of is given the size of the online economy. If you want to pretend it's 82 fair enough, but your viewpoint, on any rational analysis, is socialist.

Anyone who honestly believes that someone who wants to see the state removed from people's lives "hates the poor" is a dogmatist afraid of engaging in rational debate, substituting sentimentalist guff instead. It's the same quality of thought as " who will build the roads" or "if you've nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"

The world's best health system is Singapore. It is not public...