Thoughts for the day

[davywavy]

If suicide isn't a selfish act, how come people who jump under trains tend to do it during rush hour when it'll screw up the day for thousands of other people?

Have you ever noticed how much John Willams' Superman theme owes to Aaron Copelands' Fanfare for the Common Man?

If you play Lucretia, My Reflection by the Sisters of Mercy at 1.4x speed, it stops being a morbid dirge and becomes quite a fun dance track. However, if you play This Corrosion by the same band at the same speed multiple, it sounds like Pinky & Perky singing it.

Aneurin Bevan, when he founded the NHS in 1946, predicted that as time went by the NHS would make the populace of the UK healthier and so the cost of running the service would decrease. More than 50 years later, we're still waiting.

Comments

Re:

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

No, the discredited idea is that central social planning is a good idea in cases like this one.

Re:

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

Well, as opposed to an Insurance system or a Free Market.

The reason being, people are stupid. Look at Credit Unions, HP, Double Glazing, an edition of Watchdog. You open a free market on basic social care, and people will be ripped off by shysters.

Of course, personally I believe stupid people should be penalised, but that's not a palatable view.

I'd rather have a nanny state than one which lets you fall out of the pram.

Re:

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

bearing in mind that the tax is called 'National insurance', I'd kinda like it to do, you know, what it says. the best way to acheieve that is to remove it from central planning control and devolve it to the people who actually do the work. This was tried in part by the tursts system, but has been effectively emasculated by an increase in centrally controlled bureaucracy.

Re:

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

I'm closing this part of the thread because we're stepping out of my area of expertise, and I don't know enough about the administration aspects to blag it.