Un-fit for work?

[PuntoHowTo]

One particular example was of a visitor who had come for a chest xray because her potential new employer insisted on it. Having had the Xray this particular woman stunned the staff by asking where does she pay? She was told to forget about it as nobody pays. It would "create more work than it was worth".

would love to know the ins and outs of this,
You can't just turn up at a GP or local hospital and expect to have a Chest xray because your employer requested it, just as a lorry driver has to pay for a medical she should would have to pay for her chest xray regardless of where she was based or how long she had been in the country, also why would an employer want just a chest X-ray? its such a random thing to request, why not a full medical?

a GP won't order such tests without an NHS number and a hospital won't do them without clinical need so something isn't ringing true

 

[pooroldcodger]

As well as the people that give false details, false addresses etc. and are given treatment in hospital A&E, because it is classed as an emergency. Or the maternity care.
I have no idea why the emplyer asked for a chest Xray unless they thought that there was a TB risk or something similar.
I can't give you the details of the person involved for obvious reasons, but it was in the same area as that fine upstanding citizen Mick Philpott was living before he burnt the house down.

 

[sludgeguts]

Really which hospitals are these then? is this based on personal experience or the warped sensationalised journalism of some right wing news paper not fit for wrapping chips?

This was based on personal experience when my mother was seriously ill & taken into Stoke mandeville..
SMH had her in intensive care - 4 beds, 4 staff. The adjoining ward was also similarly staffed (High Dependancy unit) - supposedly.
By the end of week 1, the staffing levels had dropped to 1 staff overseeing all 8 beds due to 'emergencies' in other areas.
After a couple of weeks of this chronic understaffing, SMH transferred her to the Central Middlesex in London.
Despite her condition, there were so few staff around that we felt she wasn't getting the treatment she needed - yet in the main areas, we noticed loads of staff running round.
A written complaint to the hospital revealed the hospital staff to be chronically overstretched due to high numbers of 'emergency' patients.
Off the record, this turned out to be an immigration problem - patients arriving with 'diseases' that weren't found in this country - Britain had stamped them out many years ago - were overstretching the services.
And seemingly, this wasn't isolated, this was happening at other hospitals as well.
Not just the diseases either, heavily pregnant women were arriving & heading to the hospitals, just in time to have their child & then disappearing into the woodwork. I was told a similar story to pooroldcodger - they aren't chased for payment as it'd cost more than it's worth.

And BTW "which hospitals are these then?" - you think I have a line into all UK hospitals?
This was personal experience of 2 hospitals & conversations with staff.
Even though this was a few years ago, the system has barely changed, my S-i-L is a department head at a hospital & my son's fiancee is a midwife in a maternity unit, they both tell very similar stories - stories from this year.

as for the suggestion of privatising health care in the uk, currently you pay tax to fund the NHS, under a privatised system your tax money will have to be stretched between paying for services and paying a profit to the companies, it will still remain as an NHS based system with care 'free at the point of delivery' its just services being run by private companies with a bottom line to protect

And yet the huge raft of private health companies can offer insurance from £10 per month & still protect their bottom line.

The NHS budget is curently £108.9billion - from the pockets of 30 million taxpayers.
Imagine how well a private healthcare system could run if all 30million taxpayers were paying in PLUS 3 million unemployed PLUS almost 10 million pensioners (although they will contribute something via the taxes paid on their pensions)- and you would have the added bonus that the many out there doing cash-in-hand work would also contribute (else they'd not get the treatment).
Of course, this would mean that the government would have to grow a pair & insist that those who do not pay in, cannot take out.

 

[Ffoxy]

Can anyone tell me why the un-employed & never worked brigade (single, living over the brush or married) are entitled to Child benefit for every child they have?

Why not say to the entire population that benefit only goes to any MARRIED COUPLE who have a first child, a reduced rate 66%? for child 2 and no benefits for 3 and up?

That would encourage stable family background (better chance anyway but nothings perfect) limit spend on kids for Council / Private rented / Housing association houses (yes we need future Taxpayers folks) and it would save "quite a lot of money" (anyone got the numbers?) You dont qualify as an immigrant (any race, creed, religion or culture) unless you have worked here AND PAID TAX for 5 years or more.

And we should look after our genuine nationals who fall on hard times (especially our wounded forces). It's a minefield, but thats a starter for 10.

Ello again everybody BTW...

 

[pooroldcodger]

Hey welcome back Ffoxy.
Is it as cushy as they say it is inside these days?

 

[dave]

Can anyone tell me why the un-employed & never worked brigade (single, living over the brush or married) are entitled to Child benefit for every child they have?

Why not say to the entire population that benefit only goes to any MARRIED COUPLE who have a first child, a reduced rate 66%? for child 2 and no benefits for 3 and up?

That would encourage stable family background (better chance anyway but nothings perfect) limit spend on kids for Council / Private rented / Housing association houses (yes we need future Taxpayers folks) and it would save "quite a lot of money" (anyone got the numbers?) You dont qualify as an immigrant (any race, creed, religion or culture) unless you have worked here AND PAID TAX for 5 years or more.

And we should look after our genuine nationals who fall on hard times (especially our wounded forces). It's a minefield, but thats a starter for 10.

Ello again everybody BTW...

marriage doesn't encourage stable family background, family values and respect for each other does.

 

[sludgeguts]

Can anyone tell me why the un-employed & never worked brigade (single, living over the brush or married) are entitled to Child benefit for every child they have?

Why not say to the entire population that benefit only goes to any MARRIED COUPLE who have a first child, a reduced rate 66%? for child 2 and no benefits for 3 and up?

Shouldn't be allowed to breed unless they can prove they are at least trying to make a living ie by working.

My parents held down multiple jobs to try to make ends meet & I've done the same.
Then again, I've HAD to £55 p/w JSA goes nowhere when there's mouths to feed & mortgages to pay.
I'd dearly love to know how it is that some people get enough benefits to have a comfortable living.
And before AndyRKett rounds on me yet again - this is another tale from personal experience.
I had a colleague forced on me in a previous job - he was absolutely bone idle. He wasn't allowed to work more than 16hrs/week because it would then affect his benefits.
He wasn't shy about telling us all how he got £400 per month towards his mortgage plus other benefits - even though he was on £10p/h as a casual worker (so £160 p/w). In the end, I was so p1ssed off with having this idle SOB foisted off onto me that I refused to work with him. Management wouldn't listen so I phoned in sick.
When he came into a sizeable inheritance, he told us all EXACTLY how he intended to spend the cash - complete new fitted carpets all round the house, brand new car (Astra, sports jobbie) as well as a brand new mobile home on a site (to replace his very ageing one).
Someone asked him if he'd paid off his mortgage as well - he said "why should I? Benefits are paying half & in any case, that inheritance is MY money" - he was told that the money paid in benefits was OUR money.
Needless to say, feelings towards this guy were running pretty high & it could have been any one of a number of people who shopped him to the benefits agency :slayer:

 

[PuntoHowTo]

And BTW "which hospitals are these then?" - you think I have a line into all UK hospitals?
This was personal experience of 2 hospitals & conversations with staff.
Even though this was a few years ago, the system has barely changed, my S-i-L is a department head at a hospital & my son's fiancee is a midwife in a maternity unit, they both tell very similar stories - stories from this year.

So you visited a couple hospitals with an ill relative at some point in the past and know a couple of people who work in health care, and thinks this gives you the bigger picture on how the whole NHS is run?
my partner and I both work in health care and we've worked in hospitals both local and spread across the country, in every department from surgery and theatres to obstetrics and elderly medicine, we both trained at university and our peers are also spread to every corner of this land working in health care, health tourism is not the biggest issue facing the NHS today, its an issue but its not exactly at the top of the agenda when it comes to saving money or NHS resources

Currently health tourism depending on what you read is thought to cost anything from £7million to BILLIONS!!!! (if you believe the press figures based on absolutely no data) in all honesty no one can put a figure on what it is costing but a fairly accurate estimate based on the data is about £40million a year.

NHS reforms are thought to be costing about £300million, so you propose we reform the whole healthcare system again at god knows what cost to save about £40million a year?

34.1 million working age people in the UK and 30.1million pay into the pot so you want to make 30.1million working people and 27.9million children and elderly who have or will paid in to the system, suffer for the sake of 4million residents and a few ineligible immigrants

your private health care proposal could also condemn around 15million people a quarter of the population to a life without any healthcare because they are either too old or too disabled to get adequate cover for there needs?

I see no sanity in this plan what so-ever :bang:

 

[pooroldcodger]

In truth, you admit that none of us know how much it costs to have such a leaky ship approach to health care entitlements. I am shocked that you quote £40m as though it is money you might find down the back of the sofa. Would it not pay for roughly 1300 nurses a year at a guess?
Of course there are going to be genuine emergency cases that as a civilised country we have to deal with, but the definition of emergency needs to be more rigorous than "I have just arrived from Nigeria and I appear to be having triplets". It is certainly much more tha "a few ineligible immigrants". I will give you another example. A good friend of mine is living and working here (and paying a lot of tax), but he is a Pakistani national. He is here on a "Highly skilled migrant visa". Recently his elderly mother came to stay for a few months and whilst she was here she started to have some problems with her eyes. After a visit to hospital and being seen by a specialist she was told what treatment she would need. At first they were told it would cost £3000. When my friend said he couldn't afford that much all at once ( he could have afforded it if he had a month or 2 to pay) they said not to worry, we'll call it an emergency so you won't have to pay anything. It wasn't an emergency really. Ok, he is paying plenty of tax and Ni now, and has been for nearly 4 years, but his mother?
I have very little faith in the £300m (if that's the figure) re-organisation, but I assume that this is not supposed to be an annual spend is it?
In short, the NHS has gone way beyond what is was designed to do, and I have every sympathy with the staff within it, but however much money goes in, it ain't ever going to be enough, as the patient list keeps on growing.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

In truth, you admit that none of us know how much it costs to have such a leaky ship approach to health care entitlements. I am shocked that you quote £40m as though it is money you might find down the back of the sofa. Would it not pay for roughly 1300 nurses a year at a guess?

Look at it logically and propose how you will completely prevent health tourism without spending further money? for every case costing a couple of thousand you could spend that again pursuing only to find these people can't pay anyway, so you double the cost get nothing back is this in the public interest? 1300 - 1600 nurses is probably a fair guess as to what £40,000,000 will pay for but that equates to maybe 4 nurses per hospital in the whole of the country not enough to fix the huge deficit in nursing staff currently, not even enough to dent it. then again you would need to train those nurses first which costs over £100,000 per nurse, factoring in the drop out rate you might get 200 nurses with your £40million which is when you realise its peanuts.

Of course there are going to be genuine emergency cases that as a civilised country we have to deal with, but the definition of emergency needs to be more rigorous than "I have just arrived from Nigeria and I appear to be having triplets". It is certainly much more tha "a few ineligible immigrants". I will give you another example. A good friend of mine is living and working here (and paying a lot of tax), but he is a Pakistani national. He is here on a "Highly skilled migrant visa". Recently his elderly mother came to stay for a few months and whilst she was here she started to have some problems with her eyes. After a visit to hospital and being seen by a specialist she was told what treatment she would need. At first they were told it would cost £3000. When my friend said he couldn't afford that much all at once ( he could have afforded it if he had a month or 2 to pay) they said not to worry, we'll call it an emergency so you won't have to pay anything. It wasn't an emergency really. Ok, he is paying plenty of tax and Ni now, and has been for nearly 4 years, but his mother?

The NHS was founded on 'Core Principles' the 2nd being "Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay" are you in a position to judge the clinical necessity of her care and treatment, at least with her son paying into the pot the uk will get money back from him and could still pursue the cost of her treatment afterwards, emergency doesn't mean free. it just means free at the point of use. not to mention the £450million in aid the UK sends to pakistan each year probably a slightly bigger burden on the average uk tax payer? why isn't this higher on your agenda?

I have very little faith in the £300m (if that's the figure) re-organisation, but I assume that this is not supposed to be an annual spend is it?

The labour party are claiming it could cost as much as a Billion, that said how much does it cost every year for all the little tweeks and changes constantly being made to health care? if reforms don't work then how much will it cost to change to a system that does work and over what time scale?

In short, the NHS has gone way beyond what is was designed to do, and I have every sympathy with the staff within it, but however much money goes in, it ain't ever going to be enough, as the patient list keeps on growing.

its not just the patient list its the complexity of illness as well, the costs will always rise, some simple wound dressings can cost as much as £40 for a single dressing. some tablets can cost thousands, people are quick to condemn when their money is being spent but i'm sure if you needed a £40 dressing or a £1000 injection you wouldn't be so quick to complain about the costs at least the UK and the NHS fund what is clinically most effective and not what's cheapest thats why we have the MHRA and the NICE you know in the NHS you are getting the best not the cheapest.

Please compare the NHS to health care in other countries then you will see just how lucky you all are.

 

[sludgeguts]

34.1 million working age people in the UK and 30.1million pay into the pot so you want to make 30.1million working people and 27.9million children and elderly who have or will paid in to the system, suffer for the sake of 4million residents and a few ineligible immigrants

your private health care proposal could also condemn around 15million people a quarter of the population to a life without any healthcare because they are either too old or too disabled to get adequate cover for there needs?

I see no sanity in this plan what so-ever :bang:

I see no sanity in a health service moving patients 20 or 30 miles - Wycombe closed their A&E, so patients are now treated at Stoke Mandeville, a hospital already overstretched & expected to cope with the residents of the many new housing estates that have been planned for the area:bang:

The NHS is a sort of private healthcare scheme already - just that, the contributions are taken at source & it is open to the abuse of the many who don't pay into it.
There is no reason why it couldn't continue as it is - with the exception of making it known to the world that we will no longer treat those who are able to pay but don't - 3 million unemployed, millions who work cash in hand & never pay taxes, thousands of immigrants hoping for a free cure...

If private healthcare can run very well AND make a profit, why can't the NHS?
As I said before, a quick google shows you can get private healthcare for £10/month - so even basic care is within the reach of those on benefits.

And as for the elderly or disabled not getting adequate cover - the NHS already refuses treatment to those (plus many more) - you often hear of the postcode lottery.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

If private healthcare can run very well AND make a profit, why can't the NHS?
As I said before, a quick google shows you can get private healthcare for £10/month - so even basic care is within the reach of those on benefits.

And as for the elderly or disabled not getting adequate cover - the NHS already refuses treatment to those (plus many more) - you often hear of the postcode lottery.

Private health care can pick and choose the services it wants to provide and picks the most profitable. something like diabetes management is a very costly long term condition and you will struggle to find many private services in this area compared to Orthopaedics who rake in a fortune from the wealthy elderly who want new hips.

as for £10 health care, please do go and look what it covers.

one site i found listed the following terms and conditions for £10 health insurance

18% of customers can obtain cover at a cost of up to £9.92 per month. This is based on someone living in any region of the UK, up to 30 years of age at commencement, and taking out a "diagnostics only" plan. The plan covers consultations and diagnostic scans/tests up to the point of diagnosis and has a £100 excess. At the point of diagnosis, policy holders would need to arrange treatment by the NHS. Other exclusions apply and other plans are available. Analysis based on Usay customer data for June 2011 to June 2012.

So scrap the NHS where do you propose people go?

as for the post code lottery, this applies to a very very small number of very expensive treatments and procedures that some SHA fund and others don't usually bases on dubious clinical effectiveness, things like cancer treatments or new medications which have not proved to be hugely effective. generally though these are minor cases that the papers make a big song and dance about and in the last 2-3 years have become almost non-exsistant

under a private heath care system the second anyone develops a long term medical condition they will undoubtedly find them self uninsured/uninsurable

A type 1 diabetic will never be cured needs insulin for life (£40 a time for a box of insulin pens) they risk vascular damage from the insulin and from the disease, they face nerve problems eye problems kidney problems and heart problems. they didn't do anything that would give them this condition, there is no lifestyle choice you can make to get type 1 diabetes or to get rid of it and their is no cure. most have it from childhood. They will categorically not get £10 a month health insurance. some may manage the condition very well and others don't manage it at all.

Currently in the UK they get free prescriptions free eye site checks and annual health assessments all of which costs a damn sight more than £10 a month, take that away they may not afford the drugs they need to survive or if they can their health may suffer hugely leading to loss of limb from neurovascular damage eye sight. they stop working stop contributing and then become a burden to the benefits system? what do you propose then ?

your answer to an over stretched struggling system is to simply shut it all down and let private firms pick and choose where they want to operate, which will obviously be where it is most profitable and not where it is most needed.

the system you suggest is the american model which is horrific just have a read and see for yourself how well it works

as for 3million unemployed the official figure is currenly 2.56million (its been a lot worse) of which only 1.5million are seeking work the others being legitimately unemployed looking after children or family

i think its fairly clear you don't really know much about the way these systems work other than what you've been told or seen in the media

 

[pooroldcodger]

Look at it logically and propose how you will completely prevent health tourism without spending further money? for every case costing a couple of thousand you could spend that again pursuing only to find these people can't pay anyway, so you double the cost get nothing back is this in the public interest?
By requesting a form of payment guarantee up-front, as they do in USA, for those that have no entitlement.
1300 - 1600 nurses is probably a fair guess as to what £40,000,000 will pay for but that equates to maybe 4 nurses per hospital in the whole of the country not enough to fix the huge deficit in nursing staff currently, not even enough to dent it. then again you would need to train those nurses first which costs over £100,000 per nurse, factoring in the drop out rate you might get 200 nurses with your £40million which is when you realise its peanuts.
It is not peanuts, it is £40m, and that is only a guesstimate figure anyway. It cou8ld be 10x that, but the sad fact is that nobody has a clue.


The NHS was founded on 'Core Principles' the 2nd being "Access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay" are you in a position to judge the clinical necessity of her care and treatment, at least with her son paying into the pot the uk will get money back from him and could still pursue the cost of her treatment afterwards, emergency doesn't mean free. it just means free at the point of use. not to mention the £450million in aid the UK sends to pakistan each year probably a slightly bigger burden on the average uk tax payer? why isn't this higher on your agenda?

I am pretty sure that her own son knows whether it was an emergency, or whether it could have waited a couple of weeks until she went back home.
Yes, the core principles of the NHS were as you state, but do you honestly think that when the NHS was set up the fine people that did so ever envisaged the numbers of people and the way that immigration has dramatically risen in the last 10 years?
It was designed as a safety net not as an all-inclusive "eat as much as you like" - type deal.
The foreign aid figure is also on my agenda, which is why I am swopping correspondence with my MP about it as we speak! Aid to countries that can afford a nuclear arms programme? Crazy. Whist we are at it, why does China enjoy GSP status for certain categories of imported goods STILL! Has nobody noticed they are close to being the richest economy in the world? This sort of help is supposed to be for the poorest of the poor nations.


The labour party are claiming it could cost as much as a Billion, that said how much does it cost every year for all the little tweeks and changes constantly being made to health care? if reforms don't work then how much will it cost to change to a system that does work and over what time scale?

I agree with you, but the problem is we have to take some very hard decisions first, before we can sort out the plan for the future.


its not just the patient list its the complexity of illness as well, the costs will always rise, some simple wound dressings can cost as much as £40 for a single dressing. some tablets can cost thousands, people are quick to condemn when their money is being spent but i'm sure if you needed a £40 dressing or a £1000 injection you wouldn't be so quick to complain about the costs at least the UK and the NHS fund what is clinically most effective and not what's cheapest thats why we have the MHRA and the NICE you know in the NHS you are getting the best not the cheapest.
Agreed, totally.

Please compare the NHS to health care in other countries then you will see just how lucky you all are.

Believe me, I know how lucky we are, and I am not for 1 second knocking the NHS or its staff. I have travelled to over 50 countries in the worls and if I am going to be ill, this is where I want it to happen! However, the NHS is not exactly a well-kept secret is it? Along with the fact that we speak English it is another reason for us to beb such an attractive destination!
Anyway, got to watch Broadchurch now with Mrs Codger, to see whodunnit!
Nite all.

 

[pooroldcodger]

Sorry - my replies have got mixed in with your comments. I'm not very good at typing inbetween quotes!

 

[ChrisUK]

Real private health care costs nearly £100 a month . I.e cover that doesn't have an excess and covers everything the NHS does (only with no waiting lists and your own consultant who oversee's ALL your care). I know because up until last year I was paying it. I cancelled it as I'm saving up all my spare cash to either emigrate somewhere that rewards hard work or to invest in the UK depending on how the next 5-10years go .

 

[pooroldcodger]

Good luck Chris. I admire you for having a plan. It's a good way to make sure you get there!!

 

[sludgeguts]

Private health care companies are competing in a very small market.
NHS has a captive audience, it doesn't have to pay for advertisements etc. WE have NO OPTION but to contribute as the money is taken out of our wages in the tax that we pay.

If the NHS were to be privatised (not scrapped), there is no reason why all of us would need to pay the £100/month (as mentioned) - why would there be? None of us pay that at the moment (certaily not the majority).

But it would mean that with the workshy and cash-in-hand workers also paying in & no freebies being taken, we would probably be able to pay less or employ more staff - even better, those with self-inflicted injuries would then have to pay more - the drunks that flood the A&E of a weekend would have to pay a £100 excess (for example). Those who deliberately shove foregn things into their bodies would quickly stop their daft habits when they realise how much it's going to cost them

 

[The Beard]

And they shouldn't be allowed to breed either.
If you have no work ethic, you shouldn't be allowed to pass this along.

I'm sick of working my butt off just so's a load of workshy breeders can have a comfy life.
Benefits should be there to HELP people through a bad time NOT provide them with a lifestyle. People capable of working should have to work for their benefits - then they might choose to get a better paid job - something they will never do as long as everything is found for them.

At the risk of sounding really, really sanctimonious, Mrs. Beard and I married fairly late in life, I was 32 and she 36. We bought our first house almost at the peak of property prices and straight after that the mortgage interest rates kept going up and up. Because of these factors we decided to wait before having kids; Mrs. Beard had never had any.

At the time she was earning more than me and there was no paternity leave or benefit so because by this time she was approaching 40 and an ever increasing risk that a child could be born with Downs Syndrome, we decided not to have a child. The main reason for this was that we'd be unable to pay all the bills on my wages. My Grandmother was too old to look after a child, my Mother was still working as was my Dad. The in-laws were 120 miles away, so the only way a small child could be looked after was if my wife left work.

I couldn't then, and still can't, understand the rationale that if you have kids the state (therefore, everybody else) should pay for them. I can understand that some benefits should be made available to parents, but the fact that working for a living should be replaced by claiming for one instead is plainly absurd. Even then I firmly believe Child Benefit should be limited to the first two children a woman has.

If she ends up with another partner and has more kids then they should pay for them themselves.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

If the NHS were to be privatised (not scrapped), there is no reason why all of us would need to pay the £100/month (as mentioned) - why would there be? None of us pay that at the moment (certaily not the majority).

My partner and I currently pay over £500 a month in national insurance and the same again in employer contributions, so we pay well over £1000 a month towards health care and our pensions we dont see a penny in benefits and that's without income tax, so you might want to rethink your grand scheme with a £1000 a month we could buy a very good health insurance and private pension, but to do that would take food out of the mouths of the poorest children, health care away from the sickest and pensions away from the elderly.

And in any case your idiotic idea involves destroying something that works just because a small minority exploit it.

So you have a heart attack you pay your £100 excess, diagnosis of cancer? £100 please oh and some moron punches you in the face on the way home from the pub steals your phone and breaks your nose, that will be another £100 thank you very much. Can't afford it? Should have thought about that before you got I'll.

The older you get the higher the premium, obese? Pay more! Smoker? Pay more! Drink pay more! Drive a car, work in a desk job or as a drive a bus pay more.

You think we have a nanny state now wait till every aspect of your life is scrutinised in order to squeeze a few more £££s out of you by some giant private health care company.

This will be the third time now, "GO LOOK AT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" it doesn't work!


In response to The Beard I have to agree in some respects no child should suffer in poverty no child chooses to be in that family or life style, but also why are we paying out to people who earn good money a couple with a combined income of £80k a year can still happily claim child benefits, how does that help society

 

[The Beard]

you said



yes all the money gets used up with useless consultations, meetings and bad management, the rest is creamed off for shareholders and greedy directors and bankers. then invested abroad.

last time the tories were in they brain washed half the country into thinking it was the unions killing the country so they got rid of them and everyone lost their jobs and went on benefits, this time they are brainwashing the country into blaming everyone on benefits for us being in the crap

Here we go again. The unions butchered the country. Example? In 1981 I worked in the air freight industry and one day had a rush job. The production line had run out of bolts for door plates on Metros, and unless a consignment reached the factory by 6 am at the latest. At 5:30 I pulled in through the gates and had my papers stamped in a small brick building. Despite telling the bloke in the blue warehouse coat how important the pallet in the back of the Transit was, he just replied: (in Brummie accent) "Take a seat over there and wait 'til you're called." Time went by and I phoned the office when they came in at 9 and was told to wait. At 10 I was still waiting and our people phoned the Forwarding Agent and told them we wanted more money. At about 10:45 I was told to "Drive to the roundabout and join the queue." [Woo-hoo]. I was going to see my family againe.....sometime. As I was waiting in a 200 yard long queue of 38tonne trucks a driver walked past and asked me what I had in the back. When he heard he told me to follow him & I drove into a large receiving shed. He told a bloke what I had in the back and that the production line was at a standstill, and was told to speak to another bloke. This went on for a while until eventually another man in a blue coat said "No"

The badge on his chest said "Convener". The Metro production line should have re-started at 6 am. I went back to my space in the queue, outside a canteen, just before 11:30. The hooter went and I slipped inside for some scran. I was finally tipped at about 4 pm, well into the late shift. I don't know how much that stoppage cost BL, but it was a lot.

As to who was destroying the country, well I think it was splendid joint effort. Unions, lacklustre management and the great British public who deserted British products in droves.

I watched Marks & Spencer labels gradually change from "Made in Britain" to "Made in Israel" to "Made in China". With the exception of Tefal, almost all Sainsbury's dry goods are made either in India, Bangladesh or China. Anyone who buys a product without either looking at where it's made, or seeing and buying anyway is just as responsible. Not far from where I live was a company called Christy & Co. They made first class bed linen and towels. I once stayed in the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London. The towels were Christy. They also supplied a number of prestige retailers such as Harrods. A few years ago the started a cheaper range made abroad because the public wouldn't pay the cost of British products. The factory and offices were bulldozed last year. And so it goes on, Prestige cookware is now made in China and Thailand. Gieves & Hawkes will measure you for your new suit, e-mail the measurements to their highly skilled tailors and within a few days it will be sent.....from Indonesia.