Junkyard,

The theory is that most taxi's either wait at, for example, the railway station thus encouraging train use or pick up at A, drive to B, radio in, get a job near B to go to C, job near C going to D, then another from D to A.

Also I think the congestion reduction comments I read were about parking congestion, which may or may not lead to traffic jams.

Not a lot of research seems to have been published, although local governments around the world may have done their own studies.

I would like to think that those charged with improving transport and reducing traffic would actually research for solutions – but I may be deluding myself.

Cube AMS 125.

Getting more popular but not many about when I got mine.

Don't even see them in mag tests.

Seems a good bike as well.

Some studies have shown a small environmental effect from taxi useage compared to car useage.

The main benefit seems to be reducing congestion, one car providing numerous journeys rather than one car per journey.

This can have a knock on effect of reducing jams so reducing pollution.

It works very well apart from the longevity.

Have old Goretex jackets still going strong looked after to the same standard.

Starting to think about a softshell and work on being wet but warm, just can't stay dry in Goretex as I sweat a lot.

My 10 month old Rab Latok eVent leaks like hell on the shoulder areas where the rucksack straps sit.

Thought it might be breathability so washed and treated again, stood out in the rail for 5 minutes, result – wet through.

Loved the jacket and thought eVent was much more breathable than Gore-tex, very disappointed with it tbh

Thanks for that 5thElefant, I wasn't trying to put anyone down or be sarcastic, was genuinely confused by some of what had been said in the thread.

**** braver than me, that's for sure.

Something like these may be of use

http://www.ukbikestore.co.uk/product/65/te2412/titec-hell-bent-l-bend-bar-ends.html

Not always Mr Woppit, it's not always about people trying to get paid for nothing. Can also be beneficial to the employer, for example if a worker does Sat morning overtime over his contracted hours for a number of years an employer can claim an implied contract was in place and insist on them working that O/T as part of their contract.

Or, as has happened recently at a NHS Trust I know, someone who has done permanent night shifts for over 20 years even though their contract is for days/nights is claiming an implied contract. They were asked to do permanent nights by their employer, agreed to it, and have done it for a considerable time. The verbal parts of a contract are as valid as the written parts if you have evidence of their existence.

Not at my price point they haven't, druidh :D

Was just going on what had been said further up the thread and it seemed wrong to pay people for years of training in the TA if they had no obligation to go fight when necessary.

Mebbe I'm a fool but I always thought that was the point of the TA, rather than an opportunity for some to do soldiering until the need to do it for real appears then they can refuse to go.

Agree with Brant, any business that will fold after 2 days if one of its commercial partners cannot deliver would not be a well run business.

Let's face it the top and bottom of the matter is that some people are crap and others are saints – no system can reward each group accordingly and so some people don't get what they deserve.

Simplest solution is to just ignore it and go ride your bike.

druidh,

I suspect that the term 'Health Professional' refers to doctors and not Health Care Assistants and Nurses, as there are very few Nurses I have met who are earning in excess of £50K per annum.

But you already knew that, didn't you.

Average UK earnings are £24K approximately, which means that most of the employees you will meet withing a Hospital below the level of Ward Sister will be earning less than the National Average, and significantly less than the £50,000 per annum average that you linked to.

Now I wouldn't mind if Nurses were on an average of £50K but there you go…

Lord Greenville,

I think everyone, like us, who work within the NHS sees these ridiculous quantities of money wasted.

Personally many of the failings in patient care and elevated costs are due to the fundamental differences in public and private sector operations and mindsets.

I think the NHS has to be one or the other.

As an example I worked with a lady recently who had spent 11 weeks longer than necessary in hospital (cost to NHS probably £250 per day) because 2 different teams were batting her referral between them over who would eventually pick up her, admittedly, expensive package of care.

The reason for this is that each department tries to act like a private sector business and protect/maximise its own budget.

We see waste in this case as staff time and expertise is used to do assessments showing that the other 'business' should be footing the bill, yet the money comes out of the public purse whoever finally picks it up.

We see poor patient care due to longer than necessary hospital care, the increased chance of hospital acquired infection and the knock on effect of bed blocking to other patients further down the system.

No one benefits and thousands of ££££££££ wasted.

Er, don't understand a lot of this TA stuff but if, as people are saying, they have to volunteer to be mobilised then surely the whole things a waste of time and taxpayers money.

I mean, we could pay a guy for years and years then if we have a war he can just say '**** that I'm not going'.

Doesn't that just make it the Scouts for grown-ups?

OK you've sold it top me SirJon, we should begin to scrap the NHS as of the new Parliament, reduce taxation in line with the lowered expenditure and let healthcare be provided by private means.

hora,

it's the feckers at the top taking most of the money in the Public Sector same as in the banks.

And why should I lose my nice pension just cos you've lost yours.

Surely we should be trying to improve your lot not make mine worse.

If you got your bike nicked would you want it found and the perpertrators caught and punished, or would you want the people who still had bikes to have theirs taken too to make you all equal?

We within the service already have a good idea of where hard earned tax payers money goes SirJon, and yes Farmer John, much of the money that comes into the service goes on crap and management we don't need.

However, productivity from the point of view of front line services does seem to be improving.

And you've got to understand some of the measures that can cause failure. To meet some performance indicators staff must provide a poor service to patients. If we choose to put patients first then we will show as failing.

As I said much earlier in this thread I, as a Nurse, accept that I'm going to have to contribute to this ****-up.

It does gall that those responsible seem to still be getting their bonuses – my mates just got £1400 bonus and reckons on a larger one at the end of the tax year.

He works in finance for an organisation that's not done too well, has laid off tons of folk but is now re-entering profitability.

So he's on big rises and I'm on a pay freeze – seems a bit wrong to me.

TBH the all round vision on modern cars such as my Mondeo gives loads of blind spots.

Can't begin to imagine how many blind spots and areas of the vehicle a lorry driver can't see.

Lorry drivers tend to give me more room than the average car driver round here.

If they could stop riding 3 feet off the back of my car when in heavy traffic at 50 on a busy motorway, I'd probably nominate them for a knighthood

Why are Pace naming their bikes after old Peugeots?

Latest NHS costing shows £900 per night for HDU, plus drugs, plus doctors, plus specialist equipment so £30K should cover the HDU portion of the admission, plus the costs of the original maternity admission plus the cost of the SCBU for the baby plus the follow up stuff still going on.

Think the total cost will be significantly more than £30K for the Spider family hospital admission.

SirJon,

I don't totally disagree with you but much appears to be the fault of Central Government.

Tories under Thatcher felt that the NHS was undermanaged and inroduced a whole new tier, this has to a great extent been continued with Labour – Modern Matrons are often no more than another tier of non-productive management.

Biggest problem the NHS has in my opinion is being too good at the clinical stuff, so costly things we do get improved on, leading to being able to do them more often thus costing more.

Look to this page with the Harry the Spider wife and baby story – great outcome but oh so costly, HDU beds cost an absolute fortune.

20 years ago she would have died costing the NHS very little.

So we either keep pumping money into it or decide to let people who could survive die.

Lanesra,

No fan of New Labour myself but I really doubt that things will be better for me when the Conservatives get in.

TBH I've seen lots of improvements in the NHS under New Labour, even though I don't think they've done much else of use.

My main gripe is with public attitude towards the Health/Social Care professions, an attitude I expect to worsen over the next decade.

SirJohn,

the thing is I'm a bloody hard working Nurse who does loads of work with others from allied disciplines – OT, Physio, Social Work, Psychiatry. Psycholgy – within our team, and others such as Health Visitors, Midwives, GP's, District Nurses etc.

Most (but not all) are also hard working and conscientious, go well beyond the call of duty and collectively have saved/improved thousands of lives.

Have worked with Social Workers carrying 100plus caseloads yet expected to visit regular and miss nothing.

Have worked with a Physio seriously ill but not wanting to go for her treatment 'cos she was worried what would happen to her patients.

Nurses who come to work looking shite cos they've been up all night worrying about a case (that's sometimes me).

And all we ever get is complaints, criticism and attacks from outside our professions, people telling us we're overpaid, overpensioned, lacking in 'real world' skills right through to incompetent if we are ever human and miss something in that one case in a thousand (or whatever).

It does grate after a while.

What, again?

ESF

You ruined it, was hoping for a list of no's and yes's

Yes

Love mine, I'm a workshy freeloader with a great pension :D

And what would your solution be for the rubbish strewn streets of Leeds, discard those who aren't doing the job?

So what is your experience of real day to day child protection issues beyond the media?

No, many on here were slagging off public sector workers who MAY become sick, in your ideal world would you pay them long term sick or do what many private sector employers do?

I was merely pointing out that the likelihood is that his private employer will **** him off rather than look after him, and that is the standard that many on here seem to think is the correct course.

TBH, most public servants (apart from Nurses) are no more capable than the average person working in McDonalds.

I hope you're pension gets raped like Brown did for everyone elses

Lmfao, so true, mostly overpaid, useless & financed by the hard work of others, time to join the real world, just for a start drop the public sector pensions gravy train

What, like that petesgaff on the cancer thread who's a teacher.

**** freeloader, eh?

Only works half the year and will now be off for a few months pushing up the average public sector sickness.

Never happen in the private sector, they weed out dross like this, if you can't do the work then **** off.

EDIT: My missus just pointed out that he does work in the private sector so it'll be ok – they can just sack him and get someone else in.

Thank god for that, eh?

If my pay increases are supposed to be higher than the private sector I reckon some bugger is getting my share…..whoever you are I want it back.

Bonuses and pay increases for my circle of friends in the private sectors have been significantly higher than mine in past years.

Suppose many of us speak only from personal circumstances but I find it hard to believe that shop floor NHS are getting it that good.

I do see more managerial roles within the systems I work in so suppose that could be where the money is being earned.

Within my service many jobs have been re-graded from Band 6 or 7 down to Band 5.

Ten years ago doing the same job I would have been on £10-12K more than current banding, but my job is not seen as important or specialist as I have no budgetery responsibility (this was seen as a key marker for higher banding not the Nursing skills you bring to a job).

We also have the farce of increments within a band which sees my wife, a Ward Sister, earning £5K less than more time served Nurses under her. Yes, she will eventually out earn them but it will take 5 years to match them and another, I think, 4 years to reach her band potential. This method sees the NHS rewarding time served staff and punishing forward thinking motivated staff.

Anyhow, we are not going to solve any of it here so I better go to work.

Not putting down people who do unpaid overtime and feel that they have to, but many of the arguements are the same as those put forward by workers not using safety equipment/procedures in building, engineering and factories in the 80's.

If we ask for hard hats and gloves we will be seen as pussies by our colleagues, management won't be impressed and we will be ousted from our jobs.

If we want dangerous machinery isolated before we work on it then it will cost time/money and employers will be unhappy.

As well as the macho image of doing dangerous work with no care for personal safety.

A bit of unpaid when necessary is OK, but shedloads week in week out – no.

Public sector worker here (Nurse).

I agree that we will have to share the pain, unpalateable as that is, for the counrty to get out of this mess we're in.

I do feel that those who are most responsible for the mess seem to be getting away scotfree, whether that's really the case I don't know, but it's the public perception.

What galls many of my colleagues (and me too a bit) is that when the economy was doing well, profits everywhere, and friends in the private sectors were getting big rises and bonuses, the public sector had low rises to control inflation and 'prevent the economy overheating' as I heard it put.

Now you can all say 'if you don't like it then leave', but I do like my job, feel I make a difference and help people everyday. And the country would be a worse place if the only people you got in Nursing were those who weren't good enough to get jobs elsewhere.

Always seems like a kick in the teeth when I come on here and many of you think I'm a workshy, unskilled tosser who's overpaid and worthless.

Seems that the choice was 'do you want to live in a nice place but have little disposeable income?' or 'do you want to live in a sh*thole but have lots of cash to spend on toys?

Scandinavia chose option 1, UK chose 2.

I think the point about poor senior management being responsible for high sickness rates is pertinant based on my observations.

Work in a busy community health/social care team and we have a number of senior workers on long term sick due to stress.

I feel that this is due in the main, to stress imposed from above, cost cutting and unrealistic targets.

Fortunately I have chosen to stay a level or two lower so I can go home and forget (well, I try) about work.

I have had 6 sick days in the past 2 years, 5 of them after a bike crash!!!! but I reckon our average would be over 30 days due to the long termers.

Difference between public and private sector sick could likely be due to private sector getting rid of anyone who develops a long term condition.

Look at the guy on here with cancer (Petesgaff), work for a public sector body and he'll be pretty well looked after. If he worked for my last private employer they would have sacked him off and defended their decision if he challenged it legally.

Personally I think that everyone in the country should have their jobs undercut and/or outsourced to provide better value for money for the rest of us, improved profits for businesses, and a stronger economy. After all there's always gonna be someone in the world willing to do a job for less.

Oh, except my job of course.

Bugger, thats what everone wants.

Mind you, more useful jobs for society such as the marketing account executive for a plastic childrens toy company pays £40K plus car.

Who needs bins emptying when there's Chinese made plastic toys to be sold.