[kaz]

I don’t think ‘right to buy’ at rates discounted in proportion to rent already paid is in and of itself a bad thing, potentially it’s a powerful tool for delivering security to families and for developing more socially mixed housing areas. That said the implementation as it exists seems a cynical and harmful piece of the austerity program used to asset strip local authorities (often Labour areas suffering greatest losses) for the benefit of central government and the continuation of their ideological agenda. That situation needs fundamental reform. Also I think that with the right to buy should come some responsibilities placed upon those who take up that right, perhaps: time limited rent control on the property and first refusal to the local council/housing association at discounted rates when the property is sold, again time limited. To my mind that strikes a reasonable balance between the interests of those in the properties and the wider public. I should add I think the sell-off should be stopped until councils are able and compelled to reinvest in a timely fashion the full amount derived from the sale in replacement stock while ever there is a shortage of social housing in the area.

[kaz]

I’d do what your brother and sister suggest. Obviously I don’t know everything about your family but it sounds like your dad is being unreasonable by not listening to your concerns. And yes, get some legal advice. If he’s left everything to his new wife I’d have no qualms about selling it one day either…and I say that as a second wife! There’s no way I’d allow my husband to cut his children out in my favour. Our little boy splits everything 3 ways with his 2 grown up half sisters and I get a little too but they are the main beneficiaries and rightly so. Sorry if that’s too much opinion! But it would help make up my mind about the house.

[kaz]

Maybe it’s time for some principles? You won’t get them from May, Hunt, Gove or Barking Boris, it’s all about privatisation for them. In my humble opinion privatisation and health service are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable – some things just are not suitable for being privatised, the motives of the private company is not geared to public service.

Communism never worked and will never work simply because of corruption, people are venal and always want more.

[kaz]

I pay for dental treatment, I have a chequered past with NHS dentists. I get more time with a private dentist. People often say to me its expensive, but women will pay £80 to get their hair dyed and £35 every two weeks to get their nails gelled, which has no impact on their health. People do not seem to want to invest in their own health care and see it as something the government does and how little we have contributed to it we are entitled to take as much out as we can.

Quite. I actually have no problem paying for some things on the NHS, and being a 40% tax band payer I contribute far more than many people do

What I do object to is a percentage of that going to “shareholder value” – is the current government really naive enough to think that we believe it will be cheaper to deliver care privately, usually in the first wave of contracts it is more “cost effective” until the private companies “own” the value chain and then costs escallate and service declines – the gap between the two delivering “shareholder value”.

I used to work in the NHS – Reg Psych Nurse back in the 80’s. Things were tight back then too, but there was a level of pride in the system that isn’t there now. Unless you’ve actually worked in the NHS and been on the coalface you don’t really have a notion of what nurses do and face each day and what a 13 hour nightshift on an admission ward feels like on night 4.

When your alternative is a fiscally incontinent Momentum led Corbyn government, who will support unions striking over things like running trains with only a driver, there seems to be no viable alternative to keep the country running to produce the taxes to pay for my social conscience to be delivered.

Ah yes, I forgot you were one of the blinkered Corbyn haters who really genuinely believe that Austerity works and the Tory party is really out to deliver an NHS that is delivers to the people rather than their shareholding donors and supporting corporations.

The monetary system is broken, very seriously broken, but there is not a global visionary that can fix it

[kaz]

I watched a very interesting interview on TV last week where a hospital consultant said the government were actively trying to make the NHS fail in order to get public support for privatisation long term,

@kerry Absolutely – that’s what they did with the railways too – foment union strife and service withdrawal and then privatization looks like an attractive option

We need a complete refresh in Wedstminster and we need the Tories out. I always voted Tory until Cameron and I am ashamed of that. I do not know how anyone with any degree of social conscience can vote for Conservative

[kaz]

A long time ago on here I was directed to Caroline hirons blog, and it radically changed my skin care thoughts and routine. I would definitely check it out for advice.

[kaz]

Obv if this was being outsourced then the parking management company would be looking to make a profit.. using fines and high prices to get that profit.There was a bbc documentary a couple weeks back http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0803b0s which highlights how low some of these private company’s contracted by council will stoop and how incompetent/corrupt councils are.