Swerve – in my earlier post and your reply we are talking about two different things. I am talking about numbers and you are talking about expenditure.

Maybe. But what we should not – MUST not – do with it is try to learn from the USA. As said already, the USA spends more per head on state care than the UK, to provide a much, much lower level of care. US health care has far higher administrative costs as a proportion of total health spending than any other developed country. The best care in the USA is probably the best in the world, but at dizzying cost, & with huge numbers (not just the uninsured: most of the insured) not having access to that top-level care.

We might learn something from the Dutch.

I quite agree – I have never suggested that we could or should learn from the USA. In fact we do not need to travel far to do what is necessary. Our health service was, once, and justifiably, the envy of the world, until it became overburdened with systems, targets, analysis and layers of unproductive management. We need to return to a decentralised service, run by people who understand medical care, for the patients.

No, but no doubt statistics are available, although I would think of dubious merit, due to the fragmented nature of the US systerm split, as it is, between several large private schemes and Medicare, Medicaid and the State Childrens scheme.

I fear, Misha, that your view of the NHS is through rose-tinted spectacles. And to use the statistics you, yourself, have used, slightly under 700,000 of the 1.3+ million are NOT front line medically trained staff. They are support and administration.

Of course every organisation of specialists requires non-specialist support but not half of its workforce. And the sheer numbers are ludicrous. Purely on a statistical basis how can it make any sense for our health service, supporting a population of 50 million, to be the largest of any other mediacal service in the world?

The NHS is weighed down by systems and bureaucracy; it is inefficient and sluggish and should be be completely overhauled. But since there is not a single politician with the balls to do it, it will continue to grow like topsy, wasting ever more of our borrowed money.

Ooh, I don’t know – paint drying has its moments, you know……….

http://www.ashwood.biz/injection-moulded-heavy-duty-trays–lids-192-c.asp

Indeed it would appear that the injury is minor and the damage to the other aircraft not serious. These boys and girls do fly near the edge, that’s for sure!

No, but I also enjoyed the story of his crash-landed Vampire near the railway track and persuading the train guard to give him a lift with his watch as deposit, although he had no money for the fare. It typifies the man.

Not so long ago, Bill McLaren, and now Harry Carpenter – both consummate professionals. And although Harry Carpenter is probably associated with boxing more than any other sport, he commentated on almost every sport the BBC broadcast over the years, such was his natural flair.