Suggest a story for 9 August
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Tim Pinchin has emailed suggesting we look more closely at interest rate rises on student loans.
"Hello, I want to suggest a story for ipm.
Along with many of my friends, I?d noticed that from the 1st September last year the interest rate payable on my student loan (I finished university in 2003) had gone up to 4.8% apr. This was a doubling from the previous year.
I?d like to suggest a look at how it is affecting people almost a year in, how much it has made the student loan company, what that money is being used for, and if because this real stealth tax has largely gone unnoticed, it clears the way for the Student loans company to keep on putting up the interest rate until it is at a full commercial level.
I remember all the information I had about the student loan back in 1999 when I started University. It stated that the loan would only ever operate just above the rate of inflation and would never be a commercial enterprise. I?m aware that recently the government?s chosen measures of inflation have indicated a much higher level for the rest of this year, but this increase in student loan rate was announced sometime last year, before, or just at the start of the credit crunch and the subsequent problems we have seen.
I believe this issue will affect thousands of people who took out a large loan in good faith, thinking that the terms would mean that we would barely notice the total growing over the years. Now, with my £15,000 outstanding loan I?m facing £675 a year in interest payments. I earn a reasonable wage, but currently my monthly repayment is only £72, so I will only be paying off £15.75 of the balance a month.
If it could be possible to look at how the loan interest rate has increased, how many people it will affect (and hence the total liability), how it conflicts with the original messages and assurance given out, and how really it feels like a stealth tax, which will keep many people from lower income backgrounds paying back a government loan for most of their working lives, I believe it would make a really compelling story."
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I'd like to know why government offices and contracted researchers continue to blame mundane things like lad mags for a decline society and respect, when looking at hollywood you'll see that an 18 certificate film 25 years ago would be passed by the organisations who issues these certificates as a PG-13 today.
One example is Alien vs. Predator: Requielme. It has vulgar language, violence, weapons, horror, shows one person getting beaten up by a group at one point, blood and gore... all these would make an 18 certificate movie in the 1980's and before.
These movies are seen by far more poeple than lad mags, and yet the Government is not pressing them to put the certificate ratings back to what they were. Considering Hollywoods influence and tendancy to promote this kind of lifestyle, making violence and carrying weapons as cool, vulgar language appearing to be common place, its no wonder that an increasing number of young teenagers think it is normal to be an anti-social scumbag!
I know I couldn't find the real reason why this this certificate awarding process has changed, but I have always hoped an influencial News broadcaster could, or atleast ask questions of the people who have the power to put it back to normal.
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I would like to see iPM investigate Sainsbury's Anti-English Label policy.
I?m afraid the photos on my phone didn?t come out, but I am sure you?ll believe me, right?
Looking at strawberries in Sainsbury?s, I noticed that some had Scottish flags on the packaging. Of course this was to show that they were from Scotland! (The producer is listed).
Some scouting around found some English strawberries, no flags, just labelled organic.
Strangely the origins were listed as:
Fife, Scotland
Angus, Scotland
Perthshire, Scotland
and??.
Herefordshire, UK
I think if Sainsburys can promote the scottish Saltaire and Scotland on Scottish produce then they should also display the Standard of St George and the word England on english produce. Not too much to ask is it?
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Dear Sir/Madam,
May I please propose a possible story for coverage?:
It is the case that, at present, various commercial companies, many from the US, are looking to turn primary medical care provision in the UK into a
profit-making enterprise, and this is supported in many ways by our Government. For example, it is
possible that in the near future large US companies may bring together GPs, Hospitals, and themselves, on
a shareholder profit-making basis (say GPs 46% share, the Company 10% share, regional Hospitals 44% share or
so, as a rough example), to bid for the provision of primary care services in the UK. If this goes ahead, the NHS as it currently exists will no longer exist,
and instead GP and Hospital services will be provided on a 'preferred-bidder' basis. For example, the consortium comprising the likely organisational arrangement would select its preferred providers and
preferred treatments within the geographical areas of remit, and would require that GPs send patients to
those preferred-supplier/supplies, with a mind to shareholder profit-making in all of this selction process. Whilst some GP practices and Hospital departments are, since the '90's and recent GP contract, increasingly geared to ensuring that they can make a profit and also compete over patients within the same chain in order to make up the numbers and obtain their finance, this new proposal would turn pretty much all medical services in the UK into profit-making shareholder enterprises.
Of course, if this happens, it sounds feasible in the short term, but in practice it will end up as Supermarket-style medicine, by deleting those medical services and departments that are no longer profit-making and at times shifting those specialist
departments etc to geographical areas some way distant (which will affect the ability of unwell patients to attend such departments); it will encourage (open the door even more to, like widening roads into motorways encourages more cars through) greedy money-interested
medical practitioners in practices and hospitals to themsleves preferentially buy more shares and invest more in the scheme than those who are less business and money-oriented and instead more patient care and
healing-interested, which, as with politics and business and the stock market, will simply end up with the now-NHS turning into the most
powerful/greedy/competitive groups of persons climbing the tree and forming Supermarket-style monopoly medical provisions that close down the smaller village GP practices which are uncompetitive and/or more
caring and patient are/healing-interested (like local Village shops and post offices being closed down by Supermarkets, affecting communities and social
factors, and the inability for persons other than petrol-based car drivers and the generally well to travel to and attend medical provisions).
Healing and Medicine have nothing at all to do with competitive 'everyone out for him/herself' medical provision, and yet Governmental approaches, which are
not as per 'Old Labour' also, are falling into the Stock Market Rise and Fall/Recession shareholder and
buy-out approach to something that has biologically and in life no link to such transient greed-driven competitive-rather-than-cooperative-and-caring
business practice.
The Government appears, both by the
company-experiences of their own MPs, and by eliciting advice and/or money from MBA-qualified advisors, turning Medicine into a Business practice,
but Healing has nothing to do with such practice, and does not work to its timescales. A scab does not heal
in line with the needs of profit-making firms, but heals in its own natural time. A scab from a brain operation similarly takes naturally gentle time to
heal, and is not shareholder-profit-aligned.
If the above goes ahead as is seemingly supported by the UK Government, not least since Dollar/Pound signs
go che-ching in the eyes of many, persons will be ushered through the medical system and from beds ASAP,
and real Healing and real Patient care will be largely swept out of the system, as will staff in all grades whose care and time with patients is their priority,
rather than business and money.
This is also strongly related/correlated to Planetary, Social, and Environmental impacts, where the Planet/Universe has its 'ways of working'/'principles' that have their natural rates and ways of occurrence, and with regards to which the minds of many human beings, many by definition in Business and Government, give rise to practices that are not in-tune with the larger ways of working of the same by may in practice by very narrow-focussed, which leads to consequences arising in the bigger picture - e.g. as but one simple example, believing and pro-actively fostering that yet more technology and business approaches can and will 'fix' (rather than just make up the numbers to look good on paper) to anthropogenic climate change, when instead the Healing approach is to work WITH Nature, allow it to mend itself, in its own way, by its own timescales, by stepping out of the way by NOT interfering and by NOT making and using yet more 'stuff', thus innately not creating the impacts, and thus letting the Planetary etc symptoms subside in their own due time by NOT continuing to stir them up, just in another guise.
NHS Healing, and Planetary Healing, have EXACTLY the same principles, and yet many/most Business and Governmental persons and practices are NOT aligned with the same, perhaps more 'heads-down' figures and votes and money/human-power-oriented, and so the symptoms are a stressing and rushing of both patients and Planet.
It is the greedy/power-hungry/money-hungry mindsets of persons and ways that themselves need the 'Healing', and not for them to try to Govern healing itself. Only more adverse symptoms and Darwinian competition lies that way - little room for loving cooperation and selfless care...
It's an important story for Radio 4 to cover, so I hope that it can reasonably be considered please?
All the Best,
Chris.
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Tom (3) we have been looking into this for you...Sainsbury were just on the phone to the editor, Ryan, a moment ago. We're hoping to get them to respond to your post here.
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I want to talk able why on all government forms, I have to fill my Nationality as OTHER , English.
You can be British, Scottish, Welsh, Irish but not English
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Maura Crawley has emailed suggesting we look at whether babies should really be taken to the cinema.
Hello Eddie,
Yes, enjoy your programme and would like to contribute something very important which I have witnessed at first hand.
There seems to be a fashion of parents taking their young babies as little as newborns to the cinema.
I have seen a baby about six months hold its head at the Indianna Jones latest film with all the noise at top level and at other films as well. These films are either for age 12 and over and the law says that anyone below the age of 12 is not allowed to watch these films.
The parents are flouting the law and in my opinion factually speaking part of child abuse. But the cinema is also flouting the law. When I approached the cinema about this issue they just shruged their shoulders.
Maybe in a few years time this same child could be on a psycharists chouch trying to find out why they are having terrible nightmares and other problems. I would be happy if you could bring this to the attention of your audience and Womans Hour. We have parents as far as I can see do not want to make sacrifices. Their selfishness will have consequences on these children.
Also these parents whom I have seen are the ones who seem to be quite affulent as I saw them getting into their big cars. They bring the children into the cinema in child car seats.
Best regards
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Hi There,
I would like to recommend a story which may be of interest. The company I work for (a fairly large American multinational) has just introduced a salary sacrifice scheme. Let me try and explain. They offered to deduct a certain percentage of my salary so as to declare a smaller salary for national Insurance purposes. The top line on my pay slip will be a "refference salary" on which overtime and pay rises will be calculated, this is my original salary. However my declared salary is my refference salary minus a couple of percent, I am taxed on the reference salary but pay national insurance on my declared salary (are you keeping up?). The upshot of which is that I pay less National Insurance but end up with a slightly higher pay - about £200 a year. The only person to lose out appears to be the national health service. I cannot find out how much my company will save in employer contributions but I am quite sure it will be significant, why else would they do it?
We have been assured that this is all above board and has been approved by the relevant government department, in fact this scheme is already in place in a lot of large companies including the BBC.
I wrote to my MP (Alex Salmond) who wrote to Alistair Darling who in turn said that it was nothing to do with him.
So, are any of your listeners (or indeed Eddie and the team) involved in a salary sacrifice scheme? and if so what do they think of it - perhaps I'm wrong on this and the National Health service gets the same amount of money via the vagaries of the tax system. Whatever, I took the option to opt out of this just in case.
Cheers
Peter
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Over the last year of the credit crunch I have enjoyed Robert Peston?s insightful commentary, cutting through the complexities and jargon of CDOs and SIVs in a way that makes you wonder how they ever fooled anyone.
Yesterday as we approached the first anniversary of the ?Crunch? I heard him comment on the UK economy in a way that reminded me of a mix up in language that I have heard all the way through the build up of the housing bubble, and the credit bubble.
Peston commented that the UK economy was now slowing down. This is not true. The previous day the IMF predicted that real GDP growth in the UK would be 1.4% in 2008 and 1.1% in 2009. What this means is that in 2008 the UK economy will be faster and bigger than in the previous year, and in fact at any time in history. In 2009 it predicts it will be faster and bigger still.
It is true that this rate of growth will be slower than was expected before the credit crunch, but nevertheless there will be growth.
This phenomenon of differentiating changes in a number ? eg sales on the high street or GDP, from the rate of change of that number has been rife in recent years. I sometimes wonder if this has stemmed from a lack of numeracy or if it has been used to spin more interesting stories.
So for example over the last five years there have at times been headlines screaming that the UK high street was facing its ?worst result? on record, when what was meant was that the increase in sales in that year was smaller than any year since records were kept in a particular format (fairly recently). Most reasonable people would translate the comment ?worst sales ever? as meaning a drop in sales, at least in real terms. In fact these comments were often used when sales were the highest on record. This causes problems now when sales on the high street are really falling.
I?ve seen exactly the same mix up with house prices, and house price growth.
What do people think? And how is it possible that when the ?Credit Crunch? is widely described as the biggest shock to the world economy since the 70s if not the 20s, the economy, and all of us, are predicted to be doing better this year, and next year, than ever before in history?
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A NEW SONG ABOUT KNIFE CRIME
I am a singer/ artist and i am very concerned about the rise in crime
especially teenage knife crime.
I know it came as a shock to the rest of the nation but it was no
shock to me. because few years ago the government imposed a new law
that parents cannot physically discipline their children, now those
children have grown up and we are reaping what our government sew.
Few days ago i spoke to a parent whose 12-year-old daughter called the
police on her because she confiscated her daughters mobile phone.
What kind of society is the government trying to create, when parents
are raising their children in fear and you and i know that you can no
way raise a teenager in fear. Just think back to when u were a teen.
These teens are only going to get worse and if the government don't
allow parents to do their job, soon there's going to be huge
stand-offs between police and teens. NO BODY CAN DISARM A TEENAGER BUT
HIS/HER PARENTS. I think is better for a teenager to get few marks
from physical discipline from their parents than to get life in
prison. Don't you think?
I have written a song that reflects these words, and it is called 'WHY ?'
I believe the nation needs to hear it.
So if you agree help me spread the word.
You can listen to it on www.myspace.com/frankynero
Song is called "why?"
Thank you
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I came very close to being made redundant. I had to think about what I was going to do if this happened. My job is by no means safe. And my professional has been heavily hit by the fall in house prices and credit crunch and so there's not much hope of getting a job in thesame field anytime soon. I thought about travelling but wanted to do something useful and enjoyable helping to build a school in the gambia or working in an elephant sanctuary. work whichmay include accomodation. does anyone have any suggestions.
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Dear IPM,
I've stumbled across a product sold and installed by the likes of BT to local Authorities such as Hospitals, Local Councils etc., which, although ideal for the purchaser, in effect abuses the Public which the product is aimed at.
The product is called a 'CLI' Programme -(Caller Line Identity).
It is an automatically triggered recorded voice response -set up for the purpose of preventing the public from using the telephone number (line) -which was used by the Local Council/Hospital etc to contact members of the public and so prevent them -the public, from calling back on that number.
That may seem, at first glance, a perfectly fair and acceptable method of running one's administration to attain full efficiency, until you discover, as I did, to my utter disbelief, the way the product is set up.
Whilst driving my car I received a call to my mobile. Unable to answer it, I found a suitable safe place to stop and checked to see from whom the call had been made. There was a number on the screen, so I pressed the call-back key and instead of getting a 'ringing tone', there was a faint click and a recorded voice message:-
'You have dialled an incorrect number. Please check the number and re-dial'.
'Strange', I thought, how can I have dialled an incorrect number? After getting home and still puzzling over this voice message, I investigated.
To cut a long story short, I discovered, by some diligent 'phoning around, that the 'incorrect number' belonged to Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs, Borough Council. So it wasn't an 'incorrect number' after all. It was in fact, an 'unobtainable' number.
When I eventually got to talk to the Newcastle Council employee responsible for the purchase, installation and monitoring of the 'CLI' product, explaining how I had been given the runaround when responding to a number left on my mobile 'phone by one of his Council Colleagues, intimating that I could speak to someone one that number, which is normal in such circumstances, he showed no understanding at all of my feeling that I was in fact being abused by this disingenuous 'false incorrect message'. On the contrary he suggested I was being over sensitive!
Let's be clear about this. The 'CLI' message states: 'You have dialled an incorrect number. Please check the number, and redial'. Unquote.
Firstly, how can I have dialled an incorrect number, when I am responding to a number left on my mobile 'phone? And, secondly, the message also says that I should 'please check the number'. How do they propose I do this? If I could, I would get the same number, surely. But I can't, so why ask me too?
We are all being given the runaround by this type of telecommunications product. Another 'avoidance technique' built into the system to assist the bureacrats at the blatant inconvenience of Joe Public. In my language, I call it abuse of my time and money. As a Pensioner, I can afford the time, but not the money.
Mick, ~Stoke, Staffs.
ps I have discovered also that our local large hospital is another purchaser of this particulat 'CLI' product. HOW WIDESPREAD IS IT?
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RE message 13: additional info';
Some of the Hospital numbers are actually listed in the 2007/08 BT Phone Book for Stoke-on-Trent.
One such I've fallen foul of is [Personal details removed by Moderator]. (Ward 14 University Hospital of North Staffordshire).
So what is the point of 'checking the number to redial'? It is a merry-go-round.
The Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council number I referred to in M13 is [Personal details removed by Moderator].
Mick
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Hi
I would just like to make a coment about the state of the medical profession at the moment, in particular these new contracts the Doctors have signed.
In January I was involved in a car accident I was hit twice from behind at a roundabout.
This understandably resulted in me experiencing no small amount of back pain.
The immediate corse of action you might think would have been to go and see my GP. Unfortunately I had only just returned from Australia where I had been on a working holiday for 10 months. I no longer had a GP where I lived (in Leeds), nor one where I work during the week (in Scotland).
I am a freelance Geologist, I work long hours as a Project Manager on UK based ground investigation sites. When I am running a project the buck stops with me, I cannot just take time off to go and see my Doctor willy nilly, I have to be on call from 7am to 7pm and I often work longer hours than these. At the time I was running my first project since I had returned to the UK and I was determined to impress. My work also involves no small amount of heavy lifting, whether that be assisting drillers or lifting or moving numerous samples and rock core.
So that weekend I decided to go to my my family doctor in North Wales. My parents warned me that I might be unable to see the family doctor as the system had recently changed. However there was a facility for seeing a doctor at the weekend at the local hospital (Glan Clwyd in Denbighshire). This was known as "Morfa Docs".
I rang Morfa Docs on the saturday of that weekend to see whther it would have been possible to see someone. I explained that I had been in an accident, that I had been troubled by no small amount of pain in my back and that I was currently finding it difficult to carry out the work expected of me. Whilst my manager had recognised that I was not able to work at my full potential, he still expected me to work until I had certification that I was unable to. I also wanted to see a doctor so that if my back problems persisted I could take legal action against the two drivers behind me.
As a freelance geologist I have abrogated certain of my rights, whilst I do get a higher rate of pay, I do not get holiday or sick pay. Indeed if I had taken any time off I simply would have not been paid. At the time and still to a certain extent now I could not afford to take time off.
Essentially the doctor I spoke with laughed at me, fobbed me off and told me that doctors simply did not give out "sick notes" on the weekend. It was clear from his voice that the man I spoke to was not junior, rather he was an experienced doctor who just could not be bothered to see someone in genuine need (Hipocratic oath anyone?).
The up shot of all this is that I have still (some seven months later) not seen a doctor. I am plagued by bouts of crippling back pain, but these do not last long enough for me to still be experiencing the pain a few days later when I would be able to get to see a doctor.
In essence I view this as a discraceful episode. Symptomatic of the general malaise effecting the UK as a whole. More and more there seems to be a general lack of willingness to take personal responsibility for situations that occur. If one of the junior geologists that work for me had treated a member of the public or a client (and remember that is what we are to the Health Service) in such a manner I would have taken the matter extremely seriously indeed.
Further to this, as I understand it, the governments "choice" agenda within the health service would say that I have the right to see a doctor at the time of my choosing. Also that the point of the new contracts that the doctors signed was that they would be willing on initiation of their new pay structure, to work longer hours more convienient to the general public i.e. weekends.
It seems to me that doctors increasingly whine about how difficult their job is yet this particular doctor, who was no doubt extremely well paid, showed a distinct lack of dedication to his job. It is not just doctors who are dedicated to thier work, other professions show equal if not greater dedication. It would be nice if doctors could recognise this, stop complaing and do their job.
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