Me and her got a letter on 28th June from our dentist practice. We were lucky enough to be in a handful of successful NHS patients having waited 3 years to be accepted. However, this is now no longer the case. The letter informed us that as from 1st July they were no longer doing NHS and it offered us an opportunity to sign up for Denplan. This plan would entitle us to 2 check-ups a year and a polish. In essence the bill had doubled from what it was on the NHS. If any other treatment was required then it would be at a slightly reduced rate but again this was more expensive than NHS. Please note the notice time given which was 4 days and 2 of them were weekend. So we went to the Dentists to sign up as there was only one other choice. Well 2 if you count not having a dentist at all. The other choice was to ring a given number and put ourselves on a list to be nominated for another NHS practice. The waiting list for that is apparently 10 years now. So, having arrived at the dentist practice and agreed to sign up we were chatting to the reception person who was doing the business. We mentioned them no longer doing NHS patients and were informed that wasn't exactly the case. It turns out that the Dentist we were registered with was no longer doing NHS but others at the practice still were. Our's had 800 patients registered to him and "regrettably" there was no way to transfer any of them to another practice dentist so we all got binned. If however, and if you believe this you will believe anything, they get another NHS Dentist they will make us a priority to be reregistered. Any bets whoever gets into power tomorrow won't change this anytime in their reign. Privatisation by stealth and I can see more of this to come with other things.
Welcome to the Dental world that some of us got introduced to 30 yrs back.....our Denplan package works out at roughly £300 per year......one check-up and one hygienist visit a year.....and certainly no polish offered. As I said a short time back....it was suggested to me that three "aging" fillings could be replaced for £1017.....but lucky me....I was entitled through Denplan for the bill to be reduced to only £756.....with the previso that if any other problems showed up it would be added to the bill.....I've changed my dentist and these three "aging" fillings have been okayed with life still in them for awhile yet. When this all happened 30 yrs back there where no NHS dentist practices within 7 miles of us....so it was take it or lump it.
Energy may be largely used in the US but we’re all contributing to it. Climate change is a global problem and we all need to help solve it - but via a coherent plan. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51yvz51k2xo
The Polls have closed and we wait now with baited breath to see who our next glorious leader will be. Exciting isn't it....................not. There was a tie I would have stayed up till the wee small hours watching it all unfold. I might go a bit past midnight this time but only if the wine holds out.
Was woken up by something and had to have a quick look at the early results. There’s no doubt it’ll be Labour with a big majority but then, there never was once a daft decision to go the polls early was taken. Why they didn’t wait until autumn or even spring nobody knows. They’d have still lost but not as badly I think. Turnout is low, symptomatic of a general disillusionment with politics. If people stopped thinking politicians could do everything for them and got off their arses and made their own living, we’d be a lot better off. The worrying thing is how well Reform will do and what that means for the future. They’ve come second to Labour in a few constituencies but only in “Red Wall” seats where racism always lay behind Brexit voting and Johnson’s subsequent Parliamentary wins there. So what we’re seeing is older Labour voters having moved through the Conservatives to Reform. It’ll be the same in the coastal towns. I read a piece in the weekend paper about those ex holiday resorts. It was dark: the conclusion was that these places have no prospect of re-inventing themselves with new industries as those able to had already left and the remaining population was incapable of change in areas that have no natural advantages. These shifts of prosperity from place to place have always happened and couldn’t be stopped. There’s an primw example in my own home county - the area around Redruth and Camborne was at one time the richest areas in the world through copper and tin mining. It’s now the poorest in a poor county. It’s unavoidable and irreversible. The Tories have to purge themselves of their own right wing and return to being a One Nation centrist party. Let the scum gather in Reform. Their electorate is typically older than the norm and the storm will pass. I do have some sympathy for the proper Conservatives. Not only have they been lumbered with a rabid right wing but have had to face three disasters in a row - Brexit (which they handled badly) and Covid and Ukraine (where they’ve done as well as any Government was likely to). The.catastrophic results of those three things are such that how anyone is going to sort our national finances inside a decade is beyond me.
A very bad night for the country. This isn’t really a landslide for Labour. Their vote is much the same as last time and part of their gains are in Scotland, where the SNP has imploded. Turnout is low, which is a bad sign for democracy generally. Within that, the Conservative vote has collapsed and has been cannibalised by Reform, whose vote has been insufficient to win seats but enough to give the win to Labour. The Lib Dems have also flatlined over all but have taken seats from the Conservatives in rural seats where they’ve been the usual second choice. In a small number of seats (eg Leicester), Labour has lost out to Hamas supporting independents, further increasing polarisation. The good news is that Liz Truss is no longer an MP. The bad news is that Suella Braverman is.
This is what democracy is all about... half the country are delighted...the other unhappy....at the end of the day neither party deserves success. Labours share of the vote didn't increase.....the Conservative share fell off a cliff edge. The highlight for me was seeing Liz Truss lose a 24,000 majority.....and then her bad manners of keeping the result waiting and the other candidate standing around because she wasn't available for the result to be announced.....and then she ignored the decency of speaking after the result and wishing her victor all the best for the future.....her disastrous PMship cost more votes than Boris's partygate did. Many decent Tory MP's lost their seats for no fault of their own.....Penny Mordaunt among them.
Well they’re all responsible for endless internecine manoeuvring toward leadership or their own policy agenda. This all started with the European Research Group back in the 1990’s. They should have been slung out of the party back then. It’s not half the electorate on either side. Only 60% bothered to vote, reflecting disillusionment with the democratic process and that 60% are spread to include extremist groupings on left and right. Plus, we’ve been infected with the Cult of Personality Syndrome. Being an effective manager of political business to the benefit of the country isn’t enough if you don’t have “charisma”, which usually means being an egoist and a having a contempt for rules and regulations.
Yes it's worrying. There are racists in every constituency. Perhaps as the Reform guy said, they could be used for target practice by Army trainees rather than women and children in sinking rubber boats. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/reform-campaigner-clacton-called-channel-9373660 Shame the plod didn't view that as an incitement to violence because that's what it is to the numbskulls who vote Reform.
There is no point anyone pointing out the turn out for this election and saying that the results are not really valid given the numbers. When it came to Brexit voting over one quarter of the electorate didn't vote which equalled 28%. The yes vote was carried by a meagre 3% but we were all told to accept it and get over it. I would argue that only around 37% of the country voted for Brexit which is not what you could call a majority of the inhabitants permitted to voice an opinion. Our system is and has always been first past the post so if Reform dipped out with that format then tough luck. The only pity is we will have to put up with slimmy Farage appearing on our screens for as long as his interest holds out and he stops bothering to be a constituency MP. My guess he will be like Boris which is only visible when it suits and he can't earn money from somewhere else.
This must be the best bit of news the boat smugglers have had for a long time. The Rwanda plan has been binned.....I'm not saying if it was good or bad....but to bin it and not have an alternative must be rather foolhardy. I can hear from here the orders for more rubber dinghies' going in and the thousands of refugees lining up on the beaches to flood the south coast with more dinghies than the French coastguards and police can guide into English waters.
That is just plain nonsense. The Rwanda plan as you call it did nothing to stop or even make the smugglers hesitate for one day. Scrapping it, which is right in my opinion, makes not one jot of a difference to illegal immigration. Reform had an alternative plan. Intercept them in mid channel and get the Royal Marines to return them to French beaches. Of course the French would welcome that move and agree to take them back. An armed incursion into an independant sovereign state is bound to be welcomed isn't it. I think the new Labour regime will come up with a better option than that although I have my doubts that any idea will work and cannot work unless the French co-operate fully in a real sense of co-operation and not lip service.
Proportional Representation would have meant.... 1.....Labour...............234 2.....Conservative.....169 3.....Reform UK..........98. 4.....Lib/Dems............85 5.....Greens................26. Labour won a landslide on only 36% of the votes. Many voters no getting true Representation.
