Huguenot

Well perhaps, but then why would the newspapers be full of stories about distributors behaving like cartels to squeeze suppliers - supermarkets for example.

So in other words the NHS doesn't work because its own employees don't want it to? If distrust of central bureaucracy is so high that they wouldn't even tell you what price they were paying for goods, then what do you expect their reaction to be of the centralisation of drug acquisition and distribution? I foresse a complete meltdown of the workforce amidst claims that politicans are using the NHS as a political football and it takes powers away from the clinicians etc. etc. Regardless of that, there's no reason why group buying power couldn't be executed by a decentralised NHS - it's only requires cartel behaviour - I suspect that in loose affiliations of private companies the politics would swiftly be overcome and a company step in to deliver that role.

As a Polish national she would need to have worked full time for 12 months and be actively looking for work to claim income support. If she has resigned in order to claim income support then legally she's a benefit fraudster. However, I think this overlooks the central tenet of the OP, which is insinuating that foreginers are coming to UK to be parasites on our welfare state and steal money from British people. People should be reassured to discover that around 20% of Brits claim income support fo some kind - whereas only 6% of foreigners do. So the Brits are more likely to be benefit parasites than Polish housemaids.

Brilliant! A spectacularly useful nerdfest! Excellent!

I didn't say your criticisms were unsubstantive - the risks exist. The challenge is to try and balance these against their likelihood, resources necessary to mitigate, and the potential benefit of taking these risks. Every project has risks, some of those risks will be realised, and if a killjoy is sufficiently fastidious to remark on all of these before any action is taken they will be able to say 'I told you so' more than once. This isn't in itself a reason not to embark on a project, and the prophets of doom could wonder whether their warnings went unheeded because they cried wolf once too often. After all, 99% of the problems they cite will go unencountered. I think your description of the risks of big unwieldy projects is accurate and apposite. The NHS itself is a huge unwieldy project whose costs and bureaucracy have spiralled out of control as people pull it in different directions, with conflicting motives and poor information flow. The solution to this problem is self-evidently decentralisation and return of the administrative control to the coalface, where the public can adjudge the quality of service with their feet - competition. Just what this health bill does.

The task with 'risk' is not to eliminate it, but to find a balance between the potential downside and the costs and resources needed to ammeliorate them. The irony is that attempting to eliminate risk frequently results in spiralling costs and unending projects that miss all their deadlines. Just the thing that EP and Chippy are claiming they want to avoid. Risks are a wet dream for people who take great joy in criticising or bullying others. They can be dragged out to prove that 'we knew about the problem and did nothing about it' as a percursor to persistent and vicarious hate campaigns. In the particular hate campaign that Chippy is waving around like someone who has stolen someone else's lunchbox, the basis of the risk was the claim that something could have been done (by the CEO) to prevent the Baby P tragedy. Rather than the 'whistleblower' being subject to bullying and harrassment, it's the CEO who is being painted as a callous and deliberate child murderer. What it doesn't say is that taking such an approach for every child is a catastrophically expensive process that the taxpayer refuses to pay for, and risks destroying families without justification. So the judgement has to be applied subjectively by professionals - and they make mistakes.

Despite earning an average of ?45,000 a year (many far in excess of this) and having more holidays than Paris Hilton, fuel truck drivers explain that they want more money, more holidays, jobs for life and more days in cozy rural Carvery back rooms watching health and safety videos. Militant Unite union pillock leader Len McCluskey explained 'It is about aggressive barely literate ex football hooligans holding you to ransom a simple measure, the creation of an industry-wide bargaining forum. It is about bringing fairness and stability back to an essential national industry.' A spokemans said: "Fuck you, fuck the economy, and we're gonna fuck up your Easter too" That story in full...

Chippy, I don't think you know what a risk assessment is? It's an activity carried out as part of strategic planning to identify worst case scenarios in order to mitigate against them. It is a deliberate part of risk assessment to include every possible outcome regardless of likelihood. It is a PREVENTION document. It is NOT a list of the problems. Geddit? It requires no bravery to release it, just stupidity: they know that unfounded shit stirrers with vested self-interest will crop up on forums everywhere and present it as 'proof' that the plan is doomed to fail. Oh hang on...

UDT, if you have a pension then you have shares in companies that may 'benefit' from the new healthcare blueprint. According to your own ridiculous logic, that means your opinon has no validity also. I should point out that companies like Reckitt Benckiser may suffer as a result of the new plans as their own pricing comes under more scrutiny and pressure from healthcare competition. All you are trying to do is sling shit. It's pathetic. It demeans you and your arguments.

Shelby, Sunday's the quietest day of the week on the forum - but even so you should leave it a couple of days before repeating the question. Sometimes people just don't know.

I suspect that's a machine, not BBW.

It's not a technical term. ;-) If this is the problem (it may not be, the are several possibilities) it's a question of jiggling the handle. You're trying to disturb a rubber tube just inside the door...

Did you read the thread - the various proposals are all in there? Here was my offering: "It sounds like a pretty standard problem with Hotpoints that use a pressure chamber to work out whether water is in the drum or not. When the tube to the pressure chamber gets blocked the door lock feature thinks there's still water in the drum. That's why jiggle jiggle freed it up before - the jiggling freed up the pressure pipe. A combination of jiggle jiggle and time (rather than kick) may well cure the problem, and then don't use it again until you've cleared the pressure chamber." The previous poster was daft enough to ignore the advice in BOLD, and consequently the system broke the next time, and that time the jiggling didn't work. Try not to be so silly!

Isn't there an obvious question here silverfox: why shouldn't gay people have all the same rights as those in a heterosexual marriage? What is your problem with gay partnerships?

The reprint from the Mirror was circulated on union websites by union representatives and sympathisers, as it was by Chippy Minton on this one (the first to mention it on an earlier thread IIRC). My reference to union propaganda was based entirely on this observation. I can't think of a better one?

There really is confusion about the Barry Barry Road Race - it doesn't have 'run' in the title? There are a variety of rules and regulations none of which may be immediately apparent to the dilletante. It's important not to jump to conclusions. Winning can be subject to a variety of criteria, the majority of which competitors will explain to you may not involve running, and certainly not involve (except for one) coming first. Clearly any engagement where the stipulation for success was so limited would be barely worth the average Brit cocking a snook at.

I think that was a copy and paste from New Nexus :)

Doesn't Quids just believe that the middle classes aren't entitled to an opinion until they admit their failings, debase themselves before the mighty honest toilers of the working classes and grovel for forgiveness for looking down their noses at them? It's a particular conceit of the self-appointed proletariat that one cannot become worthwhile unless you do some honest graft, say what you like, and like what you bloody well say. Until the middle classes admit to Quids that both he and the working classes are genuinely better people then we are all guilty of hypocrisy. QED. To me it just looks like a persecution complex though.

Still trying to move the goalposts UDT? I'm saying that the Mirror's list of supposed evidence of insider trading behind the new NHS bill is a campaign of persecution, defamation and smear based on snide insinuation. It is toilet politics, and being exploited as usual by the unions. I imagine that people in the health service are influenced by a number of thoughts on this issue, not least will be the convenient idea that somehow the people creating a situation that doesn't appear to be in their interest are being dishonest thieves. The tactic is not to make people believe that all conservatives are thieves, but instead to sow confusion (in much the same way as climate change denialists did) and hope that the confusion heightens anxiety, discontent and protest. The one thing this tactic is not designed to do is promote rational assessment. But then UDT, you're only likely to talk a lot of rubbish now, so why I bother highlighting these facts I know not.

That doesn't sound like the right race at all - the real Barry Barry Road Race is a an elite sporting event attended by athletes excluded from the Olympics for political reasons despite their world class prowess.

PPR tax relief exists to create one of the key elements of a successful modern techonlogical society - mobility. Saying that people won't get taxed if they stay in one place is ridiculous. What about the 30 year old couple trying to trade up from a one bed studio to a small family home for the new baby just when money is most tight? You'd tax them sufficiently to prevent it? You'd do this because you're jealous that they're rich or they've got something you haven't? Insane. Yes there are abuses of this system by a minority, but the reaility is it's very difficult to create law in this area without flaws that can be exploited. SC, you're not prepared to address the real problems with the housing market: buy to let incentives, regionalisation, single residence that I've already highlighted ad nauseam simply because your peculiar approach to wealth is to forcibly deprive people who have things that you want of their assets. Whilst you may choose to pick holes in my semantics, this simply reflects a desire to gloss over the gaping holes in your own Marxist campaign to overthrow the land owning bourgeoisie. History tells us that such a strategy is bunkum.

Oh God, Fruit Salad - but have you tried them after you've undergone your first filling - it's a nightmare.

And that kind of return to centre stage deserves a swish of a cape at least :)

Steps quietly away...

No UDT, you're trying to move the goalposts (what a surprise). My complaint was against a campaign of persecution, defamation and smear based on snide insinuation. That is wrong in itself, regardless of who pursues it. The fact that it's driven by unions reflects on them. It is not union involvement that makes me think it's toilet politics.