Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@qoto.org

Is the tory promise of additional facilities in addition to or in place of the 40 new promises hospitals that they never fucking built?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckrrll51xjdo

@eunews

Thank fuck for that!!!

@RolloTreadway

I think you are being thoroughly disingenuous!

No one is saying sack all the clinical support staff obviously that would be a disaster for the NHS but junior managers have a dreadful reputation in many trusts as does the 'administration'. I know of one trust where one major speciality has 'divorced' itself from the administration and does its own admin; so dreadful is the central administration dept in that particular hospital.

Now here's a strange thing, I live in Luxembourg which spends a bit more per head of the population on healthcare than does Britain but the spend per head of population is nowhere near double that of the UK.

Over here in Luxembourg, there are no waiting lists worth talking about, even elective surgery is carried out within weeks, there is no problem whatever getting an appointment with the GP (if I phone up tomorrow, I would expect to be offered a GP appointment either tomorrow or the day after) and there is no problem whatever getting an appointment to see a dentist under the equivalent of the NHS, as all dentists work for the equivalent of the NHS. I have undergone two operations since I have been living here and in both cases I was given a private room with its own bathroom. The biggest wards over here have a maximum of two beds in them.

The healthcare system here generally is very different indeed to that in the United Kingdom! However, what I cannot understand is how the figures pan out. Here, both doctors and nurses are paid double often much more than double what they I earn in the United Kingdom. The same applies to ancillary staff like physiotherapists; In fact, everyone in the healthcare business over here he's paid much more generously than the equivalent staff in the United Kingdom. So, my question is; given that this is a very expensive country indeed and that most if not all healthcare staff are paid roughly double what they are paid in the United Kingdom how come the spend per head of the population is not double or even more than double what it is in the United Kingdom? There has to be a reason!
I suppose the next question is “where would I rather receive treatment for a serious illness, would it be in Luxembourg or in the United Kingdom” and the answer is, without one moment’s hesitation, in Luxembourg

@vicgrinberg

Back in the day when I was still working, I used drive to the UK in my company car fairly regularly. I was stopped at customs or immigration in Dover more times than I care to remember and it was always the same saga. Is this vehicle yours
Me: No, it's a company car
Them: Do you have permission from them to bring it to England?
Me: nope! The car doesn't belong to my company, it belongs to a leasing company.
Them: have they given you permission to bring it to England?
Me: All lease cars in Luxembourg have blanket permission to visit other EU countries - Luxembourg is a very small country - I go to work via Belgium so I go "abroad" every day!

I was never actually refused entry but I did get to the very curt stage more than once!

Little England tossers - I fuckin HATE them!

@vicgrinberg

Indeed, I live in Luxembourg about 15 minutes from the Belgian "border". I quite often go shopping in Belgium where a few things are available that are difficult to find in Luxembourg. The French border is about 25 minutes away and often go over to France to get food from a street market or to eat in a decent restaurant.

Germany is about 45 minutes drive from me and their DIY stores make B+Q and the like look like a very expensive corner shop! So if I want something a bit out of the ordinary in the way of DIY supplies I go there.

Although technically I should carry a passport when crossing the border as I am not an EU citizen, I never do and in any case a driving license combined with an Article 50 resident's permit will normally keep the authorities happy in any EU country.

As you say crossing the "border" in a car, coach or truck is normally done at about 30 - 50 MPH on motorways (autoroutes or autobahns) and on back roads there is just a modest plaque that indicates you have left Luxembourg and tells you what the speed limits are in the country you have just entered - that's it!

Unfortunately, Britain is full of bigoted, racist imbeciles who rather cut off their nose to spite their face, i.e. leave the EU!

Farage must have been enraged by his colleagues at the EU parliament most of whom were sharper than he in two or three languages other than their mother tongue!

In Luxembourg, kids leave school speaking 3 languages fluently - they have to! The teaching at the early stages in school is conducted in Luxembourgish, then switches to French and finally to German so you can't get through school without speaking all three pretty damned well! English is also taught to almost all school kids after they have mastered the other three!

@RolloTreadway

I think cleaners are considered front line staff - if they aren't, they should be!

Years back, I did a little software job for a local hospital in the UK. It was to deal with the provision of teas coffees sandwiches and biscuits for meetings various locations throughout the hospital.
The manual system is then in use, required the person placing the order, usually a doctor, to fill out a form in quadruplicate and submit the four copies to the catering department. One of the four copies was sent to a junior manager on a 50% part time salary for authorization (her sole responsibility). When I asked how many such requests were refused, the manager replied “Oh - we never refuse them” so I responded by asking So what is the point of “authorising” something that you never refuse to which the manager responded “well, it's public money, so it has to be properly accounted for!”
I'm quite sure there are literally 10s of thousands of instances of similarly, criminally wasteful management in the NHS.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/06/is-microsoft-trying-to-commit-.html

@chrisgerhard

It is fantastically difficult to see how Labour could possibly be worse than the venal filth that is the tory party!

@rightardia

Look - it doesn't matter a damn so long as Chick-fil-a can continue to sell the products cheaply and make PROFITS!

Profits before people - that's the American way! (see Boeing for further examples!)

I believe there are quite a lot of techies on this instance so:

I have always used Google Chrome to access qoto.org then the other day my running Mastodon instance in that browser shut down for no reason I can think of, and when I tried to log back in to it, Bitdefender resolutely refused to allow me to do that saying that destination page I had requested was riddled with malware and would download all sorts of hideous code on to my machine if I went there!

I run 6 assorted browsers all of which come under the Bitdefender umbrella of protection, so I tried a different browser namely Brave, and qoto.org loaded without protest from my antivirus as indeed it did in all my other browsers; it seems only Chrome is impacted by this issue.

I am wondering therefore if it possible that some malware that redirects requests to go to qoto.org, to a malware site, has installed itself under Chrome on this machine.

Are there any any experts out there who can suggest what this problem might be, particularly if it could be a malware problem!

1st Monday of the month at 12 midday means it's air-raid warning siren day here in Luxembourg.

Yes, they still test them every month here!

I can remember air-raid siren tests being done on air raid warning sirens in Eastbourne, my home town, when I was a kid but certainly not recently.

Do other European countries still have air-raid warning sirens a that are still tested regularly?

For those who buy from Amazon, did you know that their prices vary widely from site to site and here I am talking in extreme cases by as much as by 40%.

Unsurprisingly, given Britain's reputation as "rip off Britain", the UK site ( Amazon.co.uk ) is usually the most expensive and the German site ( Amazon.de ) which conveniently can be accessed in English, is often the cheapest. However, there is a website that will do the job of hunting down the lowest price for you

https://www.hagglezon.com/

compares prices across all the European Amazon sites and lets you see what they are charging for a given article on the range of sites!

@TimWardCam @ChrisMayLA6

I live in Luxembourg and have two pensions, A Luxembourg state pension and a British state pension.

Over here, on the combined pensions, I don't pay any tax at all as I don't reach the taxable threshold but if I moved back to my homeland, the UK, I would be taxed at the rate of around £2,500 a year!

Over here they tax the rich whereas in the UK the tory scum tax the poor!

@rbreich

Were it not for the extreme danger that huge corporations particularly American ones, pose to mankind's life on earth, I think I would find it highly amusing that an invention of mankind; namely the limited liability company, has taken on a life of its own. These days these monstrous corporations are permitted to act as if they were gods rather that as a contemptible invention of mankind!

For that reason, were I in government, I would introduce legislation that would oblige limited liability companies to put the environment and the welfare of their employees before profitability, by law and the legislation I would favour would impose massive fines on all directors and senior management personally, as well as on the company itself, for any breaches of these regulations.