I’m a Pundit

A survey recently undertaken showed that less than 50% of Brits actually knew where their heart was located, this shocking news places us among the most ignorant of nations, leaving us on a par with countries such as Africa, Uzbekistan and America.

What worried me most however was the actual diagram the University students who compiled this survey produced,

I saw this diagram and instantly began to despair.  While it is well known that university students tend to be a little bit docile, with minds coddled by drugs and alcohol, it is interesting to see they can use a diagram that places the heart upon a central line in the body.

Either the huamn body had evolved to keep the heart right in the middle of the horizontal axis, or the people performing this survey don’t actually know where the human heart is either, leaving you with a pin the tail on the donkey style questionnaire created by people who have never seen a donkey, and are infact a little bit spastic.

written by Oli \\ tags: Education, England, UK

Let me summarise the following text for those who are busy and cannot read this report on the incoming VAT changes but increase ni NI contributions

There is no immediate change in the main rates of class 1 employers and employees national insurance from 6 April 2009. However, a large rise in class 1 national insurance is proposed from 6 April 2011 to 11.5% for employees, to 13.3% for employers, and the additional rate payable above the upper limit is to increase from 1% to 1.5%. This would bring in a significant amount of additional revenue for the Government beyond 2011.

Class 3 national insurance is a voluntary class normally paid by people who want to top up their NI contributions in order to receive the full state pension. This voluntary rate is increasing from £8.10 per week to £12.05 per week from 6 April 2009. So if you need to top-up your NI contributions it would be best to do this while the rate remains at £8.10 per week.

This overall increase in taxes is a huge jump on every single British citizen, god knows how the government can justify its 4.5% inflation figure when it jumps the basic class 3 national insurance contributions by near 50%

It gets even worse when you realise that Labour have already signed a document declaring that when the VAT gets returned from 15% it will infact be raised to 18.5% to help the deficit caused by their own incompetence.

Argh!

written by Oli \\ tags: Budget, UK, VAT

In Britain we have the NHS, a sytem envied by many other countries.  It’s shiny public face however covers huge defecits.  Today they are debating a key decision which will allow people to top up their NHS treatment with drugs that the NHS would not normally provide.

This sounds a good idea till you look at what happened with our road taxation system not so long ago.  Road/Car tax was initially brought in to cover the cost of our roads, meaning car owners footed the bill.  But wait a second when we buy fuel on petrol around 80% of that is tax, the government said this tax was to cover road upkeep, but wasn’t that what car tax was for?

Now just to rub salt in the wounds the governmetn is implementing Tolls on our roads, why is this? To support our road infrastructure of course.

So with this NHS top up fee to increase availablity to drugs outside the NHS I am severely worried that the number of drugs available on the NHS will steadily decrease and more and more people will be forced to pay for their own drugs while we still pay a huge amount of tax in other ways to support our NHS system in the first place.

I really do think the UK tax system needs a shake up, with huge across the board simplization and removal of ‘duplicate taxes’ where possible.

I do not think that NHS top ups should be allowed on the NHS I do however think that the NHS should be provideing life saving drugs, rather than letting people die because their life saving drugs are too expensive.

Currently human life in the Uk is valued at less than £30,000, fan-fucking-tastic.

written by Oli \\ tags: Drugs, Medicine, NHS, NICE, Top Up, UK