Wednesday 20 August 2008

To Pay? Or Not To Pay?.... That, is the Prescription

Firstly my apologies for the lack of ramblings over the past few days. Yours truly has been a little on the busy side work wise but a number of people are healthier for it!

So what am I on about here? Well, although I've not had chance to ramble, I have been able to peruse other blogs and one thing that came up in one was to do with the fact that Scotland will be recieving free prescriptions from 2011.

Wales already have free prescriptions but here in good old blighty people are still having to pay £7.10 for each item on a prescription whereas in Scotland they are only £5 (work that one out!) and they are reducing it each year to eventually Zero!

Personally I think this is a bit unfair. The last time I looked, we were all still part of the UK. Is it time that we all had free prescriptions?

A number of years ago, one man went to the European Court as he thought it unfair that if you were a woman over 60 you didn't pay but if you were a man, you didn't get them free until you were 65. They deemed the practice unlawful and now anyone over 60 gets free prescriptions.

Will there be someone brave enough to do this regarding charges? Surely the variation or price or even a lack of one cannot continue.

Should we just let Scotland and Wales get on with it? Perhaps they really should go their separate ways and maybe set up passport control on the borders - I really don't know.

Not only is this grossly unfair to the people of England, but it's unfair to anyone who's income in not particularly great but doesn't fall into any of the exempt catagories

Maybe we should dig out the Wansum Channel and declare independence.

I'm thinking we could then have a new political party on the scene called the Thanet Independence Party (AKA - T.I.P.)

It's time us Englanders got something for a change!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, you are quite right - it is an unfair situation. It's also not good that so many people will insist on a free prescription for readily available over the counter drugs rather than pay for the medicines themselves. The cost of the medicine being a lot less than the prescription, if you see what I mean. Too many GPs are being pressurised into allowing this to happen.

As for the Wantsum Channel. According to flood defenceless plans, we may not have to dig it out, it will reoccur by itself!

Ken Gregory said...

The only advantage, as far as I can see, in reopening the Wansum and declaring UDI would be that our cars would need to be taxed insured or mot'd. But then half of them are not now anyway. To be an independant state we would need to have some source of financial income, Any ideas? ( I suppose we could market the hot air from the council chamber).

On a more serious note, The other major difference is the charge for care homes for the elderly.

In Scotland its free. Thats because we are paying for it in England.

Ken Gregory said...

Ps I had a typo, ''our cars would NOT etc''