What in the name of the wee man do we pay taxes for?

Great advice @shiney, thank you I will hold off for a couple of weeks to see what comes of the referral from the GP, and if that fails I will give Moorfields a call.

I agree that taxation is essential for services to be provided, but I wouldn't say that paying somewhere in the region of £20k a year in various taxes is taking them for granted. I don't think that it is unreasonable to expect the services that we have paid for to actually be delivered and up to scratch?

And if money is so tight for the NHS, why are millions being spent on procedures that are not really essential? Whilst I accept that someone changing their gender will be of significant importance to the individual, is it really something that the NHS should be paying for?

I also have to ask how much more money would be available to run our services if they were not farmed out to contractors who have to realise a profit? There are loads of private companies involved in health care nowadays - Virgin being one of the biggest names I can think of - all of which are making profits out of their contracts; for the sake of discussion, let's say that one of these contracts is £100m a year; within that, there is likely to be £10m - £15m that is profit for the company. That is £10m - £15m a year that we are paying in taxes that is NOT being spent on the services at the end. Now multiply those figures up to the total NHS budget, and you have an absolute shed-load of taxpayers money doing nothing more than lining the pockets of shareholders. How on earth does that make sense?

EDIT - I have just done a very quick search, and the total NHS budget for this year is £107bn; so, even allowing for the fact that only a proportion of that budget will be spent on contracts with private contractors, it is not beyond the realms of imagination that there is £3bn to £5bn in that budget that is pure profit for contractors? How much more could be done if that money was spent on services and not on profits?

 

@fat controller If you go to Moorfields you want to tell them that your eye has started to get worse and that your doctor seems to think there's nothing wrong - whereas you know there is.

A&E will see you and after seeing different nurses etc. you will be passed to a doctor. The doctor will ask you why you think that it's an emergency so you need to say that it's getting worse and your doctor doesn't seem interested, and that you are trying to change doctors' practice as yours is closing.

You can then explain how important it is for your work.

I went through all this today. My situation was different but I felt it necessary to see someone whom I could trust and I told him that the optician said that I should go to A&E if it was troubling me. I first phoned the help line at Moorfields and they told me to go to their A&E (the doc had asked me why I didn't go to my local ophthalmic hospital) and I said that their own advice line told me to come down.

He gave me a thorough checking out, agreed that I had the problem but told me not to worry about it as it comes with age . Then gave me a list of symptoms and said that if any of them occur then I should go to A&E immediately. He said that the chance of that occurring is one in five hundred so I shouldn't worry. (After all, it's not his eye! )

He did tell me not to do any bungee jumping!

 

You were always good at maths.

 

Thanks @shiney

 

Somewhat interestingly, the opposition to the council are trying to get the charges overturned as they believe that it is illegal for the council to charge for household waste. Apparently, there was legislation passed by the coalition government that prevented councils for charging for waste that was classed as household (including from DIY). I have signed the online petition....

 

I don't remember that change.

 

Are you sure they are charging for household waste @fat controller ? In Surrey we had a lot of speculation and confusing media reports when the new charges were brought in recently. But eventually the council have clarified new charging rates, and they are only going to apply to non-household waste (bricks, plasterboard, soil etc). Household waste is still free across all of Surrey's tips so it won't affect us. I think it's fair enough that councils charge for dumping building waste, it used to mean us council tax payers were funding other's extensions - those people will have to pay for it themselves in the future.