there have been quite a few cases where violent offenders have been released and committed murder. Off hand i don;t know if they were alreay murderers or lesser forms of violent offences but 20 years? most of them serve no where near that.

NHS, i think it should be sort of privatised. Pay tax for it as normal and give it to a company to run as the NHS does. You can bet they will cut out the paperwork and make it run like a business which is what should be done.

Same thing happened when BT was privatised (i worked for them at the time) lead times for installations dropped rtight down and service improved greatly. I think it might well work for the NHS as well.

As for the NHS- you should take it back under public ownership and stop messing about privatising it piecemeal. That way you would get rid of a lot of the paperwork involved in costing things out, keeping track of things etc etc.

I know several nurses and others within the NHS and they continually complain about the seemingly ever increasing paperwork.

Your right when you say capital punishment should never be a cost driven decision. My argument is puely from the point of protecting other people once they come out of prison again.

Boris, we kind of touched on that a couple of messages back. yes no justice system is 100% infallable but with modern methods things are much better than when we did used to have the death penalty so the problem, while not totally cured, would be reduced. At the end of the day the question that has to be asked is is it better to mistakenly kill one innocent than to have murderers reoffending X number of times.

It’s a very tricky moral question, to which i don;t have the perfect answer. maybe cut and dried cases would be given the death penalty while others where they are still convicted but with enought uncertainties to cast a slight doubt then incarceration might be the answer…… wiser heads than mine would have to establish the criteria.

I always used to smoke outside, so I don’t see why other people can’t do that – I always hated coming home stinking of smoke, even when I was a smoker. If pubs want to be welcoming to smokers, they can put up some kind of roofing outside to keep the rain off and provide a heater (she says tolerantly). I’d rather people went outside than areas were smoking or non-smoking inside – in a mixed group of smokers and non-smokers, someone is always going to end up losing out, either by having to sit in a smoky room or by craving a cigarette and not being able to have one. I would have actually welcomed it as a smoker, when it wouldn’t have been weird to say “I’m just going outside for a cigarette”, rather than weighing up whether lighting a cigarette and potentially annoying my friends was more urgent than not having a cigarette all evening and wanting to chew my own hand off.

In any place other than pubs and restaurants, there aren’t segregated areas and this already happens. No one smokes actually in their office any more, after all – they either have to go outside or into smoking rooms. (Not that I’ve ever seen one of these mythical places anywhere I’ve worked – in my current office, smokers have to go out to a kind of bus shelter in the woods behind the bikesheds. It’s like being back at school.)

I don’t agree with capital punishment full stop, so I guess I would never agree with it. However, I suppose what I was trying to say is that I don’t agree with policy decisions being taken on the cost to the state, rather than the morality of the situation.

Don’t know how to fix the NHS or whether even to believe it’s broken. It’s been a political football for as long as I can remember. My own experience with the NHS has been generally positive – I had 4-month wait for an appointment for a scan, but as soon as that was done, it all moved really fast.

(I’m really enjoying this discussion, by the way – it’s making me think!)

very aware of the problems with capital punishment.

Anybody got figures on number of murderers who then go do something life saving v number who reoffend in some way? I very much doubt that the comparison would be on the side of good.

And also aware of the problems with wrongfull convictions, having said that with modern forensics the chances of wrongfull convictions are much reduced.

I think you’d be closer to say that what “this” civilised society does is allow them to reoffend or redeem. Of course the majority really do neither, they just return to an average state neither saving nor taking lives.

I’m not great at presenting arguments like this in writing but i will dig out comments from someone who was and either post them or send them on as we’ve kind of strayed from the subject a bit.

As for the NHS being the baddies…. i waited 18 months to have an arthroscopy on my knee so that they could diagnose exactly what the physiotherapists had been telling them was wrong…. apparently i had the perfect exacple of this specific injury as they kept showing my knee to every student who came through the place.

Then after diagnosing what had already been diagnosed they then said 18 months for the actual operation to fix it…. i’m still waiting after 5 years and will probably have to go throught the whole process again as i’ve been out the country for 2 years.

the main problem with the NHS is the amount of paper pushing that takes place, i don’t have the exact figures but a hell of a lot is spent on admin rather than treatment. I know you need a certain degree of administration but the various people i know who work in the NHS say it’s getting worse all the time.

Excuse me, Hatter, but where does this 5% figure come from ? I’d like to know how a researcher concludes that despite their protestations to the contrary, someone “actually” doesn’t want to give up ? Because they failed to do so ? That would be circular reasoning, wouldn’t it ?

My point is that people are more complicated than “Want something”, or “Don’t want something”.
People tend to be split 80-20, or 70-30, or even worse 50-50… which makes behavioral change difficult and unpredictable. It’s not about what people “really” want”, it’s about the balance of motivating factors.

2. Delster, consider this hypothetical situation. A murderer serves his sentence, repents and re-trains as a doctor, goes on to save 250 lives through his skill and dedication. So if you’d killed him in prison, wouldn’t you have “effectively taken the lives” of those 250 people ?

A civilised society allows people the oportunity to redeem themselves.

Not to mention the fact that the “convicted murderer” might have been wrongly convicted in the first place. Does happen, you know.

Woolly.

PS Nicotine patches don’t have to prescribed. No-one in the NHS is “pushing” patches. They just work for some people, that’s all.

There seems to be lot of mistrust of the NHS out there. Are we the baddies now ?

There, I always knew we men were the discerning sex. We like only shiny things if they have moveable bits, and that we can take apart.

Bob

don’t disagree with you on that one, they do indeed pay a lot of tax into the system and some of it does go to the NHS.

As for basing policy on it, the way i see the smoking ban is that over half of the adult population don’t smoke so why should a minority (all be it a large one) cause discomfort to the majority? If i’m in a smokey room i find my eyes feel the effect, i dislike the smell and i end up going home smelling of smoke.

So instead of all this i don’t think it’s particularly unfair for those who do wish to smoke to have to go outside or into special areas.

An additional benefit to this would be a good chance of people who already smoke stopping and maybe even kids not taking it up in the first place.

Yes Obese people do tend to have health problems and yes in the majority of cases it is down to the individual. If you believe the charts i’m actually obese myself, having said that the last time i was the correct weight i’d not eaten for 3 weeks, been flat on my back and lost a huge amount of my muscle mass, i also looked like a victim of a concentration camp. I exercise and am in fairly good health so personally i think the charts are a little out in their ranges…. after all someone who’s barrel chested will weight more than someone who’s not for the same height but may well be in a much better physical condition.

As for the capital punishment side i’m actually in favour of it for certain things. Look at all the people who have been killed by a person who is all ready a convicted criminal with a violent nature, some of them even while on parole or early release. By refusing to take the life of the person who killed once we have effectivly taken the life of the second person they have killed.

again thats just my opinion

I personally don’t like the idea of basing policy on judging people’s behaviour by the amount of money the state then has to spend on them, particular if the behaviour is legal in the first place. Obese people are more likely to have health problems than people of a “normal” weight – you could say that was self-inflicted. Keeping people in prison for life is hugely expensive and arguably the life prison term is self-inflicted – should we then reintroduce capital punishment?

I’m coming up with extreme examples, I know. Of course, if it’s just a personal objection (rather than you think the state should somehow do something about it – e.g. not fund healthcare for smoking-related illnesses), then I have no issue with it! And that’s my own personal opinion…

Too right. And it’s a message reinforced by the NHS whenever it prescribes nicotine patches/gum.
Harry Hill nailed it: [while rubbing stomach] “Heroin, eh – very moreish isn’t it?”

“The Clever Little Clock is a small, battery-powered alarm clock that has been extensively modified using a number of highly-specialized techniques. The Clever Little Clock does not plug into the wall and has no direct or indirect influence on the audio signal — not on house wiring, audio components, cables, interconnects, power cords or acoustic waves. Yet the Clock has a pronounced affect on the sound produced by all digital and analog playback systems.”

Ah I love the smell of snake-oil in the morning!

“OOOOOOOOh, My! – This is really dramatic! Ok, I will let it freeflow without thinking too much about what I am trying to say….. here goes nothing. What I feel is a realignment of the Sonics within the Space that the musical envelope is trying to occupy in my room. I hear more of everything, but somehow differently. More Space!! – and it seems there is a lingering of the notes that fade into the space – a deep, ambient hall or recording space in the field I never knew existed in all of my familiar recordings. Bass extension is outrageous! — now I see what I’ve been missing. One caveat might actually be a blessing: the body of information is wider, deeper and taller – simply “more of it,” and this has me turning the volume down a shade from my normal level — more dynamic range? …Oh, yeah — these clocks are staying in the system!” – Brent, Sept 2005 ”

You jut can’t make it up.

Now there’s an effective marketing campaign. They have managed to make love and a semi-precious rock synonymous. Very clever and it has made them rich.

Ogie16 if that 6% rate is correct then it is in line with that of other drugs. About 5% is the number of people, who say they want to quit whatever is their drug of choice, who actually do want to quit. The rest haven’t really decided to quit yet. Abstinence is however part of the problem. For many users cutting down, not quitting is the solution.

If nicotine is an effective and useful drug then its addictiveness is irrelevant. We should never allow something as arbitrary and unimportant as addiction to get in the way. Our society is far too obsessed with the crazy idea that being physically addicted to something is inherently bad, rather than being merely inconvenient and costing a little money.

Have nicotine patches been double-blind tested? How effective are they versus placebo?

It is a myth that heroin is particularly hard to quit. Heroin is not really different to other recreational drugs, alcohol included, when a person actually wants to stop they can and do.

Those anti-smoking ads are probably largely a waste of time. It is probably like other recreatinal drugs, those that get scared off aren’t really interested to start. At best the campaigns re-inforce their decision rather than sway them.

Delster time will tell if those quitting subsequent to the ban will stick with it. While I’d prefer not to end up smelling of cigarette smoke and I don’t know why smokers are moaning so much about having to go outside from time to time to get their fix, I am not convinced that secondhand smoke is a major threat. Better venitlation may have been a better solution for everyone. I’ve spent the night inside well-ventilated venues packed with smokers and have not come home smelling of cigarette smoke.

DrSteve why worry about risky behaviour at all? Are we telling rock climbers to give up because it can get them killed? Society in general has a rather warped attitude to risky behaviour. It is each person’s choice the risks they wish to engage and those they wish to avoid. I agree though that doing something risky because you expect a quick fix once you’re broken is rather stupid. The US is rather backward because they are perhaps the most crazed in the failed war on drugs, yet they have a constant bombardment of TV advertising telling you about the latest miracle drug to make you happy.