They do have private dentistry, but you have to pay for it. The mind set of many Brit’s is that everything health related should be free. Very few dentists accept NIH payments, because it doesn’t come close to covering the costs of treatment.
Correct. Aside, I had a Brit coworker(here in the states, 1990’s)who had major dental issues. His teeth were literally rotting in his head. His breath was so bad several coworkers refused to work near him. The pain he must have been suffering had to be near blinding. I pulled him aside and said you need to see a dentist. He refused, as he said it’s free in UK and when he goes back he would ‘have it attended’. “You realize we offer medical & dental insurance here right”? ‘Yes, but I didn’t sign up, since I would have to pay towards it’. He eventually ended up in a ER with life threatening infections. Shortly thereafter, he quit and returned to England.
But yes. This certainly isn't a socialist country. Few countries could be called socialist. (The Scandinavians are sane capitalists despite the socialist moniker...) We're neoliberal, though finally that little fantasy is dissolving into the ether. The disaster obvious to all but a vanishing few.
Oh. Could have fooled me. What was all the nationalization of public utilities, the railroads, coal, heavy industry and the Bank of England about, if not socialism? Clement Attlee was a free market advocate? The Beveridge Report wasn't written by a socialist? The socialists had to implement mass immigration of the non-British to carry that out. Your native population has now been displaced by people with their hands out. Don't tell me, let me guess, the UK isn't really socialist because they "didn't impose 'real' socialism ."
Clement Attlee did all that in the 1940s and 1950s. He died before the first waves of migration you refer to in the 1960s. And every vestige of 'socialism' was reversed in the 1980s. I'm writing about today in 2024, not the 1940s or 1950s.
Not sure about being displaced. Our native population is 85% white British. America's is 59% non white Hispanic from 80% back in 1980.
I'm not sure which sides you are rooting against (or for?). It feels like you are shooting from various sides of a polygon. Nevertheless, I think building more homes would certainly help the housing crisis. And as for dentists, pay them and they will come. (I have to say, when watching British TV, the two things that seem most remarked are the cramped quarters (except for those lovely manors) and the higgledy-piggledy teeth of the actors. So, we have concordance there. :)
Left and right is dead, hence shooting from seemingly both sides. I'm a traditional Liberal. I like things that work/general sanity. I certainly don't bat for any team.
Hahaha. Half the population has Turkey Teeth now. The half that watches Reality TV anyway...
Now I'd be mortified if anyone called me an 'idealist' .....but I Have a Dream. Just supposing some ever-so-clever future government managed to role back the 60s dream of boo hoo to marriage and monogamy. And they managed to re-ignite a fashion for two parent stable family formation.
Twenty years down the line would we still have a "housing crisis"?
Even if we did not we certainly would have a much smaller population of feral males brought up by out-of-their-depth single mothers....... Just sayin'
Those social changes you describe happened in the US, France, Germany, et al. The housing situation in those countries, as I pointed out, is nowhere near as bad as ours.
That's a fair point. But - whilst I am not dismissive of the reality of the (widely reported) UK Housing Crisis - I do get frustrated by two qualifiers that never seem to get mentioned. One is the single parent crisis I flagged in my original comment and the other is this: we are told that 1 in 4 boomers is a property millionnaire. Well there's a corollary to that surely? Their children stand to soon inherit a massive amount of real estate. Why does that never get a mention in the young-will-never-own-a-home narrative?
Single-parent households are 15% to 20% here. Depending on which figures you use, SPH are either the same level or higher in the US, France, and Germany.
True. But it does get mentioned. That's all well and good for those who'll inherit, but it doesn't increase supply. So, rents will remain extortionate and barriers to home ownership will remain steep. Boomers aren't that old, either. The oldest Boomers are 78. Average age of death is 89, almost 90, now. Plus... If we really have to pin our hopes on people dying, something's gone very wrong!
Well I'll just say that I've read a very lot of UK Housing Crisis pieces in recent times and my two small qualifiers have been entirely absent from all of them.
Sure, but this is one of those upside-down problems to which we must pretend there is no solution. Another one was the 'immigration doesn't hold down wages' canard. For decades, this nonsense, which violates basic economics, was presented as gospel. With this performative problem, we must pretend that increasing the population by millions and not building enough houses hasn't had an effect.
Ah well now we're back to the old Irish joke about a man giving directions "Well I wouldn't start from here." I am too old now to think in terms of practical political "solutions". I don't think there is any solution to what Western civilisation has done to itself in my lifetime.
Don't start from here..... It should have been 1) don't let them in in the first place without a copper-bottomed clarity that their presence was going to be of long-term benefit to the host nation. Send them back if they turn out criminal and don't care a damn what becomes of them after. 2) don't go down the road of 60s spoilt-brat narcissism that trashed the idea of stable two-parent family formation (no..not so much among the middle class who aopted it as a 'luxury belief' but those down the social scale who absorbed the nonsense to their infinite harm). Hope you're having a good Sunday!
Lol. I visit my uncle in Bulgaria each summer. It's like 1983 there. No puritans. No self-helpers. Bliss. (Not to mention the laughably affordable everything.)
Pretty sure it was labour who fucked up dentistry, by introducing targets. My old dentist predicted what would happen and he's been proven correct. Tooth extraction up, and fewer NHS dentists. However the successive administrations have done nothing to solve the problems and the cost of private dental care is spiralling ever upwards.
Housing - immigration isn't helping. Planning regs aren't helping. Too many would be buyers, too few houses. Too many customers, too few rental properties....much needs to be done to level the field. I wonder how my kids are going to manage when the time comes.
I'm not partisan. Tony Blair messed up just as much if not more than Thatcher's governments. Since then, there's been a consensus of decline. I don't wave flags. They're all shit. I just know that other countries function, and ours doesn't.
Ummm... idk. We need PR. We need new parties. Ones willing to do the apparently undoable. Hopefully, your children will ride the wave toward a more sensible country. Eventually, this madness will give way.
Absolutely agree, how do you choose between 3 cheeks of the same bloated arse? I wouldn't trust old Captain FlipFlop as far as I could spit, Fishy Rishi lacks the balls needed to sort out the mess he's inherited and don't get me started on the utterly clueless LibDems. Ed Davey has literally gone missing since his part in the post office scandal was laid bare. We need someone with the balls and "I don't give a shit what you think of me" attitude of Thatcher to sort out the mess. But there isn't anyone. Where I live it's either LibDem or Tory and I'm salivating at the prospect of either candidate knocking on the door....so I can tell one why I'll never vote for him in a million years, and the other owes me an apology. We had many an email exchange during covid and I told him what would happen, and I was right.....🤣😂😂
For the first time, I probably won't vote. I pray for a hung parliament and PR. End this nonsense already. Consider all the major changes thrust upon us over the years. Not one was a majority view.
Mr.Gage, we have the same issue here in the states. I agree it isn't as bad, but the left is forever trying.
In some states, it's because they can't build fast enough. That causes price increases. You know, normal markets.
Then you have blue states that restrict build new homes and apartments. They have sky high rents and home prices.
I watched a home flipping show a few years back. An 800 sqft house in LA sold for 1.5 million dollars.
Here in Minnesota that's a cabin in the woods. It would sell for 70 thousand on acres. More if on a lake. But never fear, our leftist polls in St. Paul are hard at work to make Minnesota, California.
I believe in your system that multiple parties can work. In our system it has always been two parties since Andrew Jackson. Could it work here? I'm not sure it would. We have basically abolished one party and formed another.
Can't imagine why they haven't tried private sector dentistry. The U.S. has plenty of dentists. Is there a law against it?
They do have private dentistry, but you have to pay for it. The mind set of many Brit’s is that everything health related should be free. Very few dentists accept NIH payments, because it doesn’t come close to covering the costs of treatment.
So decent dentistry for the wealthy, crap dentistry for the middle and lower classes. Socialism has trained them well, to their own disadvantage.
Correct. Aside, I had a Brit coworker(here in the states, 1990’s)who had major dental issues. His teeth were literally rotting in his head. His breath was so bad several coworkers refused to work near him. The pain he must have been suffering had to be near blinding. I pulled him aside and said you need to see a dentist. He refused, as he said it’s free in UK and when he goes back he would ‘have it attended’. “You realize we offer medical & dental insurance here right”? ‘Yes, but I didn’t sign up, since I would have to pay towards it’. He eventually ended up in a ER with life threatening infections. Shortly thereafter, he quit and returned to England.
Blimey...
But yes. This certainly isn't a socialist country. Few countries could be called socialist. (The Scandinavians are sane capitalists despite the socialist moniker...) We're neoliberal, though finally that little fantasy is dissolving into the ether. The disaster obvious to all but a vanishing few.
Oh. Could have fooled me. What was all the nationalization of public utilities, the railroads, coal, heavy industry and the Bank of England about, if not socialism? Clement Attlee was a free market advocate? The Beveridge Report wasn't written by a socialist? The socialists had to implement mass immigration of the non-British to carry that out. Your native population has now been displaced by people with their hands out. Don't tell me, let me guess, the UK isn't really socialist because they "didn't impose 'real' socialism ."
Clement Attlee did all that in the 1940s and 1950s. He died before the first waves of migration you refer to in the 1960s. And every vestige of 'socialism' was reversed in the 1980s. I'm writing about today in 2024, not the 1940s or 1950s.
Not sure about being displaced. Our native population is 85% white British. America's is 59% non white Hispanic from 80% back in 1980.
No... we pay for dentistry whether private or on the NHS. The problem is so few dentists for so many people.
It's not a question of socialism versus capitalism. Aside from universal healthcare, little in this country could be deemed socialist.
I see it is the same across the pond..
regarding the housing crisis ☹️
I appreciate Your candor Chris George regarding the state of housing in the UK ..
I'm not sure which sides you are rooting against (or for?). It feels like you are shooting from various sides of a polygon. Nevertheless, I think building more homes would certainly help the housing crisis. And as for dentists, pay them and they will come. (I have to say, when watching British TV, the two things that seem most remarked are the cramped quarters (except for those lovely manors) and the higgledy-piggledy teeth of the actors. So, we have concordance there. :)
Left and right is dead, hence shooting from seemingly both sides. I'm a traditional Liberal. I like things that work/general sanity. I certainly don't bat for any team.
Hahaha. Half the population has Turkey Teeth now. The half that watches Reality TV anyway...
Is now a good time to mention that the hotel housing asylum seekers down the road here, have a dentist that visits them on site (FOC)?
I’m pretty sure that bringing this up makes me a bigot/nazi/transphobe (Delete as applicable) though, apologies.
Now I'd be mortified if anyone called me an 'idealist' .....but I Have a Dream. Just supposing some ever-so-clever future government managed to role back the 60s dream of boo hoo to marriage and monogamy. And they managed to re-ignite a fashion for two parent stable family formation.
Twenty years down the line would we still have a "housing crisis"?
Even if we did not we certainly would have a much smaller population of feral males brought up by out-of-their-depth single mothers....... Just sayin'
Those social changes you describe happened in the US, France, Germany, et al. The housing situation in those countries, as I pointed out, is nowhere near as bad as ours.
That's a fair point. But - whilst I am not dismissive of the reality of the (widely reported) UK Housing Crisis - I do get frustrated by two qualifiers that never seem to get mentioned. One is the single parent crisis I flagged in my original comment and the other is this: we are told that 1 in 4 boomers is a property millionnaire. Well there's a corollary to that surely? Their children stand to soon inherit a massive amount of real estate. Why does that never get a mention in the young-will-never-own-a-home narrative?
Single-parent households are 15% to 20% here. Depending on which figures you use, SPH are either the same level or higher in the US, France, and Germany.
True. But it does get mentioned. That's all well and good for those who'll inherit, but it doesn't increase supply. So, rents will remain extortionate and barriers to home ownership will remain steep. Boomers aren't that old, either. The oldest Boomers are 78. Average age of death is 89, almost 90, now. Plus... If we really have to pin our hopes on people dying, something's gone very wrong!
Well I'll just say that I've read a very lot of UK Housing Crisis pieces in recent times and my two small qualifiers have been entirely absent from all of them.
Sure, but this is one of those upside-down problems to which we must pretend there is no solution. Another one was the 'immigration doesn't hold down wages' canard. For decades, this nonsense, which violates basic economics, was presented as gospel. With this performative problem, we must pretend that increasing the population by millions and not building enough houses hasn't had an effect.
Ah well now we're back to the old Irish joke about a man giving directions "Well I wouldn't start from here." I am too old now to think in terms of practical political "solutions". I don't think there is any solution to what Western civilisation has done to itself in my lifetime.
Don't start from here..... It should have been 1) don't let them in in the first place without a copper-bottomed clarity that their presence was going to be of long-term benefit to the host nation. Send them back if they turn out criminal and don't care a damn what becomes of them after. 2) don't go down the road of 60s spoilt-brat narcissism that trashed the idea of stable two-parent family formation (no..not so much among the middle class who aopted it as a 'luxury belief' but those down the social scale who absorbed the nonsense to their infinite harm). Hope you're having a good Sunday!
Gold! Sadly, the situation is much the same in the colonies, old chap.
At least you're always basking in sunshine, mate.
Yes, unlike Perfidious Albion, the weather is temperate, which makes sleeping in your car slightly less unpleasant.
Lol. I visit my uncle in Bulgaria each summer. It's like 1983 there. No puritans. No self-helpers. Bliss. (Not to mention the laughably affordable everything.)
I've only just started reading but having a giggle. Why does Gentle Dental sound so hilarious?!
Hahaha. It's so sinister. I'd sooner book at Scale and Polish at Mental Dental than at Gentle Dental. The latter is hiding something...
I just had to comment on how much i enjoyed your writing. I have sent on just so others can enjoy the way you articulated the issues.
That's very kind of you, Rena. Thank you!
Pretty sure it was labour who fucked up dentistry, by introducing targets. My old dentist predicted what would happen and he's been proven correct. Tooth extraction up, and fewer NHS dentists. However the successive administrations have done nothing to solve the problems and the cost of private dental care is spiralling ever upwards.
Housing - immigration isn't helping. Planning regs aren't helping. Too many would be buyers, too few houses. Too many customers, too few rental properties....much needs to be done to level the field. I wonder how my kids are going to manage when the time comes.
I'm not partisan. Tony Blair messed up just as much if not more than Thatcher's governments. Since then, there's been a consensus of decline. I don't wave flags. They're all shit. I just know that other countries function, and ours doesn't.
Ummm... idk. We need PR. We need new parties. Ones willing to do the apparently undoable. Hopefully, your children will ride the wave toward a more sensible country. Eventually, this madness will give way.
Absolutely agree, how do you choose between 3 cheeks of the same bloated arse? I wouldn't trust old Captain FlipFlop as far as I could spit, Fishy Rishi lacks the balls needed to sort out the mess he's inherited and don't get me started on the utterly clueless LibDems. Ed Davey has literally gone missing since his part in the post office scandal was laid bare. We need someone with the balls and "I don't give a shit what you think of me" attitude of Thatcher to sort out the mess. But there isn't anyone. Where I live it's either LibDem or Tory and I'm salivating at the prospect of either candidate knocking on the door....so I can tell one why I'll never vote for him in a million years, and the other owes me an apology. We had many an email exchange during covid and I told him what would happen, and I was right.....🤣😂😂
Hahahaha. They're failed celebs.
For the first time, I probably won't vote. I pray for a hung parliament and PR. End this nonsense already. Consider all the major changes thrust upon us over the years. Not one was a majority view.
Mr.Gage, we have the same issue here in the states. I agree it isn't as bad, but the left is forever trying.
In some states, it's because they can't build fast enough. That causes price increases. You know, normal markets.
Then you have blue states that restrict build new homes and apartments. They have sky high rents and home prices.
I watched a home flipping show a few years back. An 800 sqft house in LA sold for 1.5 million dollars.
Here in Minnesota that's a cabin in the woods. It would sell for 70 thousand on acres. More if on a lake. But never fear, our leftist polls in St. Paul are hard at work to make Minnesota, California.
The joys of our two-party systems, eh?
I believe in your system that multiple parties can work. In our system it has always been two parties since Andrew Jackson. Could it work here? I'm not sure it would. We have basically abolished one party and formed another.