The point is, its possible to drive on roads in NZ that are not maintained by the government, so the tax ostensibly being paid per mile in fuel tax isn't going to maintain the road you are necessarily on...

And when driving from the UK to France, the ICE drivers are using UK road-taxed fuel, so the counter-point is the same :)

It doesn't even have to be linked to the car tax.

NZ uses "Road User Charges" for diesel - it does not have the tax built in at the pump (petrol does), so all diesel cars have to buy blocks of kilometres as tax. The government get updated when your annual vehicle inspection is done, but between those inspections its up to you to make sure you have enough spare kilometres left for your trips. If you get stopped by police and they check, being too far out is considered to be tax evasion and a criminal offence.

Who are already required to record mileage on UK roads for other reasons, so thats a solved problem.

And in New Zealand you can easily drive miles and miles on private roads, which are not maintained by the government...

Educational standards have been declining for a long time. It hasn't just recently gotten bad because of Corona. Both math and English instruction have declined to the point that people like you are making excuses for remedial instruction in college.

The sabotage is intentional even if those doing it don't think they are engaging in sabotage. This is painfully obvious if you interact with the K12 education system.

Parents these days have to more to repair the damage done by professionals.

As the other poster says, the reason for the shortage is because successive British governments have cut funding in the NHS in real terms, and are now flailing around as those cuts have really started to bite.

And every time the doctors or nurses strike to make a point, they get gaslit because "think of the patients".

Healthcare systems run on two things - staff, and good will.

The government has reduced the staff well below minimum, and burned up all the good will, so now theres nothing left. Fewer doctors are coming into the NHS through British training schemes because those are capped and indeed some have been reduced recently, and more doctors are retiring early or leaving the country.

And thats not counting the doctors who were forced to retire early because of the Tory governments cap on lifetime pension contributions - when the government dictates how much you pay into your pension, and also dictate that above a certain threshold of lifetime contributions you become liable for a huge tax bill immediately, and you cant withdraw from the pension contributions without also forfeiting the pension itself, then your only option to avoid a huge tax bill is ... retirement....

For a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist country, its astounding how much US law makers get involved in the running of businesses, whether it be with regulations, hearings or "opinions". US law makers love to do it.

Of course, its all performative - calling CEOs into hearings to berate them rather than actually doing fact finding, basically using the hearings as a court where the people appearing have already been judged and sentenced. Got to be seen doing something, but lets certainly not fix the issue through good legislation, because berating people in public is more fun.

My wife is one of those who left.

Yes, a lot of it is to do with the over worked and under paid, but not all of it - a lot of it is also due to the unbelievable stress of the responsibility heaped on you as a doctor, coupled with the diminishing respect for being a doctor by pretty much everyone.

For example, GPs being told that they have to open in the evenings and weekends, despite not having enough staff to run a 9-5 Monday to Friday service already - and your budget is being taken by the pharmacists who are doing random pointless examinations or reviews on anyone who comes through the door (because the pharmacy makes money that way, but they can charge the GP for doing it). And if you refuse to, then a GMC complaint is raised.

How about being rung up by the police at 6pm and told to do a wellness check on a patient, despite it being the police’s responsibility and not yours - but because you have now been told, you have a duty of care if anything happens. Which means a GMC complaint being raised.

How about the physicians associate refusing to take your guidance, and putting in complaints if you have any feed back at all which isnt glowingly positive, despite them being under your license and insurance. Which means a GMC complaint being raised.

How about having to spend £100,000 and two years of your life defending your license because someone thought you had too much to drink at the staff party and thus must be an alcoholic, with no evidence at all.

How about the government dictating how much you pay into your pension fund each month, how much you will get back, the pension fund being massively in profit to the point where the government gets £6Billion in rebates from it annually, and STILL requires you to pay more in and take less out

How about patients coming into your consulting room clutching the Daily Mail, complaining that you get paid too much because thats what the newspaper says and ranting for 20 minutes, and then still complaining that you are running behind.

How about the only way to get a specialist training position is to have an interview on one specific day of the year, but your current training program absolutely refusing you the ability to go to it?

I can go on and on.

Antibacterial soap doesn't contain antibiotics... At least, it never has in any country I've lived in.

Their properties are supposed to be chemical in nature, not medication based - the fact that they haven't exactly stood up to scrutiny isnt surprising, but they arent adding to the current antibiotic-resistent problem...

It will live on on the various worlds of Alastair Reynolds books...

I generally agree with you, but I dont think the OP works at SpaceX, they are just a fanboi dissing on anything else - and they are the target of my comment.

A few things to note...

Over the past couple of decades, more and more roles within the British healthcare system have become able to prescribe - pharmacists (as noted in the summary), nurse prescribers, physicians associates (who technically should be under the supervision of a GP, but the way the NHS has that set up its very much a "PA prescribes, GP actually has little say")...

The role of doctors in the British healthcare system is being deminished and replaced by lower paid, lower trained positions, and GPs are particularly hard hit by it - which is why GPs are retiring or moving overseas at record rates, far beyond the ability for the current GP training schemes to replace them.

The UK is actively doctor hostile these days, and British doctors do not want to be part of it any more.

"If you arent doing things on the same timescale and using the same approach as the company I wank over, then you shouldn't even bother".

Thats your post summed up in one sentence.

Wow, wasnt aware of that!

VS For Mac was nothing more than a rebrand of Xamarin MonoDevelop, a third party IDE - it never had anything in common with actual VS.