MicroB

Fake news. In 2010, 50% of UK pensioners pay tax. Now about 66% of you lot in the UK pay tax. Pensions are taxable income. People just make up cobblers to suit their own prejudices. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/23/pensioners-paying-more-income-tax/

And its possible, without having made no contributions in tax and national insurance, to return to the UK after a working career outside of it, and receive full benefit of that NHS. Todays taxes are to pay for today's healthcare, not tomorrow's.

In 1946, there was the first uplift, which wasn't paid out to pensioners outside of Great Britain. The National Insurance Act 1946 contained a general disqualification for payment of benefits absent from Great Britain, together with power for regulations to remove the disqualification. Upratings, of which there were three between July 1948 and July 1955, were not payable to persons not resident in Great Britain. The formal policy was made in 1955. Subsequent regulations providing for pension increases have continued to have the same effect. Between 1948 and 1955, the UK entered into reciprocal agreements with France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, which provided for payment of retirement pension in the countries concerned. Upratings were paid. Pensions were also payable, by a special arrangement, in Ireland but were not uprated until 1966. Until 1973, recipricol arrangements were made with 30 countries to allow pension increases. This stopped in 1981. In July 1995, there was a parliamentary debate on the Pension Bill amendments for upratings to be paid, defeated by large majorities. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-05-04/debates/0f8a64d2-9e26-4fc8-813d-2504e909e8ae/Pensions(Expatriates) In theory, all UK pensioners could go home, and their pensions increased to the current rate. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1994-07-06/debates/6df169bc-8bd2-4d30-909b-312ad520b9d4/OverseasPensioners William Hague pointed out that todays NI contributions pays for today's pensioner, not your future pension. So arguments about paying into a system for future entitlement falls fat on its face. There isn't the money to pay for overseas pensioners, who mostly don't vote, who mostly don't pay taxes, to have their pension increased.

The most recent data is to 2022: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/datasets/ukresidentsvisitsabroad If you consider Britons traveling to APAC as a market (ie. the choice isn't between Thailand and Benidorm this year), then before the pandemic, about 8-9% of Britons going on holiday/visiting Asia were picking Thailand. In 2021, that dipped to 3%, and it looks like India benefited from that (though India travel will be a mix of holidays, a lot of family visits and business reconnections) and in 2022, it went back up to 8%. If I strip out India and Pakistan, then in 2022, Thailand attracted 18% of British visitors to APAC, compared to 13-15% prepandemic. Non-HK China has collapsed; 16% before pandemic and 3% in 2022; 14% in 2021. Other Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam etc) went from 34% to 48-51%, and that seems to be at the expense of China, and, to a lesser degree, Japan and Hong Kong. Countries in this selection are Hong Kong (China) Other China India Japan Pakistan Sri Lanka Thailand Other Asia Australia New Zealand But if I consider a wider range of destinations, then a slight different story. Comparing % share in 2022 to 2019, only the following countries have increased their share. The dominating feature, except for Brazil, is the Package Holiday. Destinations more associated with more independant travel, which is basically Asia, have lost out. I suspect there is a combination of cost; the destinations closer to the UK will be cheaper, but also, post COVID, security, ie having the support of a Tui, Virgin etc to not strand you at an airport etc.. Its more complex that that, because you also have to get into spend, nights stayed etc, which is all in that data source. One take away is that Thailand has to work hard to get the Tour Operators to fill up flights, charters. Something that might be distorting is hotel vacancies; has Thailand become a place where there are more people living out of a Hotel room? The biggest losers, in terms of the holiday share, are USA, Cyprus, France, Ireland, China, Japan, and Other Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia etc) Thailand is down 0.2%, but Sri Lanka, which has more package tours, is down 0.1%. Interestingly, USA is down 0.8%, Canada is down 0.12%. I put that down to Florida (Disney) being too expensive. The £:$ during that period wasn't too bad. Greece Portugal Spain Turkey Egypt Morocco Barbados Jamaica Other Caribbean Brazil Mexico Fly/cruise (stay onboard)

Trump has said he wants to take the US out of NATO. He actually can't, but he can stop cooperation. Article 5 isn't mandatory. p-ed MOD briefings are baking in a Trump win as worse case. I think that is unlikely, but we have to assume that the US over the next few years will be ineffectual as a friend because of political paralysis brought about by the pro-Russian faction of the GOP. As for this article; SCMP, which propagandises for Chinese soft power, picked up a Business Insider article, which is borderline clickbait, which picked up a Bloomberg Op-Ed writted by a retired SACEUR who last served over 10 years ago. These days he's paid to write about stuff. There is already a high degree of formalised cooperation between Japan and N ATO, through MOUs. There is no need for formal treaties, and it would be of no surprise that NATO is looking for global partners. Incidently, NATO members don't necessarily bring military capabilities. The Baltic States have no significant military. But they offer strategic capabiltiies. If NATO is expanded, then Article 6 might need to be addressed. Most people are generally aware of Article 5, Article 4 less so. Article 6 defined NATO's area of operations, where Article 5 can be invoked, based on latitude. It was written in to make sure NATO wasn't fighting Britain and France's post-colonial wars.It has been suggested that changes to Article 6 can facilitate Georgia and Ukraine's membership (both have border disputes, but Article 6 can be rewritten to exclude the areas defined by the border disputes). Hence, Article 5 was not invoked in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Technically, a strike on Pearl harbour is not an Article 5 moment.

Lived in plain sight and a prominant member of the local expat community, renewed UK passport under fake name, and a nice motor yacht. Failing health and ran out of money. There is a lot of information about him out there. I'll not give him any more publicity. He can rot. ".

Or maybe he gave himself up because he is dying and wants the NHS, via the Prison Service, to look after him. Might even end up having a chocolate overdose like Rolf Harris had inside HMP Stafford. A trial is needed first. Obviously a fake UK passport on the list will throw a massive red flag.

Some reading material for you (all peer reviewed) Lima MMS, Cavalcante FML, Macêdo TS, Galindo Neto NM, Caetano JÁ, Barros LM. Cloth face masks to prevent Covid-19 and other respiratory infections. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem. 2020;28:e3353. doi: 10.1590/1518-8345.4537.3353. Epub 2020 Aug 10. PMID: 32785565; PMCID: PMC7417132. Jain M, Kim ST, Xu C, Li H, Rose G. Efficacy and Use of Cloth Masks: A Scoping Review. Cureus. 2020 Sep 13;12(9):e10423. doi: 10.7759/cureus.10423. PMID: 33062538; PMCID: PMC7553716. Collard MK, Vaz A, Irving H, Khan MF, Mullis D, Brady D, Nolan K, Cahill R. Reusable cloth masks in operating theatre. Br J Surg. 2023 Sep 6;110(10):1260-1263. doi: 10.1093/bjs/znad104. PMID: 37119205. Jefferson T, Del Mar CB, Dooley L, Ferroni E, Al-Ansary LA, Bawazeer GA, van Driel ML, Jones MA, Thorning S, Beller EM, Clark J, Hoffmann TC, Glasziou PP, Conly JM. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020 Nov 20;11(11):CD006207. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5. Update in: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2023 Jan 30;1:CD006207. PMID: 33215698; PMCID: PMC8094623. MacIntyre CR, Seale H, Dung TC, Hien NT, Nga PT, Chughtai AA, Rahman B, Dwyer DE, Wang Q. A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers. BMJ Open. 2015 Apr 22;5(4):e006577. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006577. PMID: 25903751; PMCID: PMC4420971. Shimasaki N, Okaue A, Kikuno R, Shinohara K. Comparison of the Filter Efficiency of Medical Nonwoven Fabrics against Three Different Microbe Aerosols. Biocontrol Sci. 2018;23(2):61-69. doi: 10.4265/bio.23.61. PMID: 29910210. If you understand how a car air filter works, then you will have some understanding how medical filters work. Firstly, medical air filters do not work like a sieve; ie filtering materials based on a size cutoff. Given a virus is 0.02um, you would likely suffocate with such a mask. But you do know HEPA filters work, don't you. Car air filters and medical air filter work off a similar principle; that the direction of brownian motion on a small particle can be disrupted by electrostatic charge. Bacteria and viruses tend to be negatively charged, due to the presence of things like teichoic acids. That makes them quite sticky when it comes to a positively charged surface. Plain cotton is neutral. Dyed cotton is weakly positive (thats how you get cotton to take up dye). Woven cotton fibers are quite evenly distributed, in a mesh. That means the chances of of a small particle coming close to these surfaces is less than a randomly woven material. The chances of a particle coming into close proximity to a charged fiber might be increased with a double layer of cotton, ideally with the second layer at 45 degrees to the first. The problem with cotton is when it becomes wet, it becomes negatively charged, so it doesn't work well. Now bring in the car air filter. Most people will know the standard air filter is usually made of paper, a randomly woven cellulose material, and assume it will sufficiently filter particles of a certain size that might harm your engine. Some might also know these filters can be quite restrictive to air flow, and cause loss of power. So an upgrade might be to use a cotton filter from someone like K&N. Ah, but you can't just fit a K&N dry. It has to be oiled first. The oil, lightly applied to the cotton, gives a decently charged surface to capture most of those dust particles, without impinging air flow. But K&Ns don't work in very dusty environments, where the average particle size, instead of being 3-5um, is more like 100um, where the particles have sufficient mass not to be affected by the charged oilm and just pass by. Which is where the medical masks come in; they are generally not made from paper, but from spun polypropylene, polyurethane, polyacrylonitrile, polystyrene, polycarbonate, polyethylene, or polyester. These material are quite strongly positively charged (like nylon trousers), and also they are water resistant; water is not going to change that inherant property. N95 masks are not rated to remove 95% of viruses, but 95% of a standardised mix of particles. Whether cloth masks "work" depends on the policy objective; what is your definition of the measure having worked. Clearly there is a hierarchy of masks, with homemade masks at the bottom, and fully sealed hepa filtered active air units at the top. The effect of masks in controlling transmission is additive. The more masks worn, the greater the knock down. Two individual with N95 masks face each other. One exhales. 5% of the viral particles he has exhaled escape. Assuming the other person gets the full brunt of the other person's breath, he gets 0.25% of the particles breathed out, which is better than the 5% he would have been exposed to without a mask. For a surgeon, thats probably enough, given all the other measures put in place to reduce nosocomial infection. Now you have to consider the infectious dose (ID50); the number of bacteria or virons required to cause illness or death in 50% of participants. Generally this is lower for threat agents that are delivered direct to the blood rather than inaled. The body has its own measures, to knockdown the inhaled dose, such as saliva, cilia and the like. So that also contributes to the perceived efficacy of a mas material. ie the efficacy will vary depending on how well the threat agent does against the body's own defences. eg. anthrax spores are bullet proof, and negotiating the body's primary defences is super easy, barely an inconvenience. The ID50 of most viruses is usually around 1000; so 1000 of these have to get through before they will probably give you problems. But ID50 is an average; for some people, its much lower, for others, its much higher. The Amerithrax attacks following 911 highlighted that, when anthrax laced letters were sent through the US post. No one in the postal service got sick, despite exposure, but the recipiants did. So that relates to the policy objective. Are you hoping to eliminate all infections through a cloth mask policy? No, because it will likely fail. A manufactured cotton mask, at best, has 25% efficiency, will reduce risk to another mask wearer by 44% and that is probably not enough to eliminate risk of infection to all. But it will reduce the risk of infection to some. Is the policy objective to reduce hospital admissions? Yes it will work, but the problem is the limited efficacy of the mask is impacted greatly by how it is worn, and the design. Plus there is a time factor; even if correctly worn, the performance degrades over time. How well it works is largely down to the etiology of the virus. Even before COVID-19, it was known that flu would affect people in different ways, with some being very seriously affected. A test was being developed to identify specific biomarkers associated with high risk. The risk of COVID-19 becoming serious was not simply a case of cardiovascular health, weight and immunorobustness, because there were exceptions. The fit young person developing issues. The 95 year old lung cancer with one lung being barely affected (yes, this was a case). Those comorbidities might also be the result of genetic traits. Is the policy objective to be a nudge factor alongside other control measures? I believe it did. Masks were a reminder that you should do something, as simple as keeping a distance, no coughing in someone's face etc. If you want good studies on population use of masks, hospital studies are not them. That's because hospital studies are concerned about the efficacy of masks among a very niche part of the population; sick, hospitalised people. And the masks are not operating in isolation, they are part of a layered approach to infection control. The best studies are those prepared for the military, and these are mostly restricted. There are some in the public domain: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1213764.pdf This is not a comment on the proposed policy/prank, but a reaction to "paper masks don't work".

So you acknowledge that a Briton living overseas can return to the UK and sponge off the State despite never paying a penning in tax of NI?

Ok, obviously someone took over your account, because you never said any of these things: (Large scale immigration started 3 generations ago, so it is reasonable to ask for some sort of context tom a statement like "I had never seen a non-white person before when I was a child". There are some parts of the UK where I might think that would be a reasonable statement at a certain point in time. But as you intimate, you came of age in the 1960s, having been completely oblivious to the concept of a yellow/brown/black face, despite living in one of the Northern cities, except in the pages of your geography text books (grammar school?), then in your early 20s, become an avid listener of Enoch Powell, while at the same time being a habitual drug user in order to get by in some sort of musical entourage, I would naturally raise my eyebrows at that statement (whether any of it was true, that in fact, you were an ultra right wing hippy, and an admirer of Powell, when in fact, as you approach the end of your life, you have turned into your dad (who probably didn't like the idea of children taking drugs). (where I come from, "abduction" is kidnapping. It was a presumption on my part that you were describing yourself as a child. My mistake, you were describing yourself as an adult playing on the street without fear of "interferance" (rape)). If a child, pretty sad, that you had to play alone, no friends to play with. Hence later on turning to drugs to get on in life. Its a pretty strange to say, I suspect you are referring to the Rochdale case, something a lot of your ilk are obsessed with. (You need to check your account credentials. Because someone else pretending to be you in a post admitted to being a cocaine user, as well as LSD. That same person though said they drew a line at "smack". Some one admitting to taking illicit oral narcotics, illegal hallucinogens, cannabis and cocaine I would suspect of having a drug problem and being used to coming into contact with organised crime (the drug dealers)). I don't know any criminals, you did, because how else did you purchase your drugs. Not from Boots. (My mistake, I didn't know you were a member of a sect/cult, and not part of the Established Church). When you hijack a thread, be prepared to be taken to task with the statements that you make.

Once again, no time frame, so meaningless statement and the previous correspondant claimed to have lived in a "city" in the North West of England, while ranting on about kids being kidnapped (ignoring that the most notorious case that happened when he was a kid), heroin (while saying taking pills was totally fine, and elsewhere, supporting cocaine usage), moaning about having his religion being changed (and he's probably like 90% of Britons, not really religious anyhow). He also ignored we tried to change their religion as well (missionaries etc). This discourse started because Sam Bum decided, on a thread about the UK and Thailand exploring a possible partnership, to bring in a well known anti-immigrant (anti-Muslim) trope about a supposed Swiss mayor refusing a mosque to be built. He brought up the Muslim faith for some reason only known to himself. And then he brings up Race. Completely random and off topic to the matter in hand. Thread hijackers have to suck it up, when I see it for what it is, and he doesn't like it with home truths.

You inferred the link between colour tv and race. Yes I did note your unintelligent quip; I get it. You refer to Afro-caribbean people as "coloured". You claim to have lived in a British city and never to have seen a yellow, black or brown face in the sixties. Not true. You admit to taken illicit narcotics, but drew the line at heroin. Better times now than those hateful years. I was born in the 60s. My mum and dad were army. They couldn't afford to buy a TV until 1974, and even then, it was a B&W portable in Hong Kong. They managed to rent a colour TV by 1979. So if you had a colour TV, which you probably made up, in the 1960s, you were well off. And you probably saw "coloured" people in your North Western English City. The reason you struggle to get an appointment is too many old people, and the government, on and off, blocking imported doctors. Your time is over. By the time the next UK government works out this deal, you will likely be the proverbial 6 feet under.

Retreading an old path, his weakness was to have a referendum in the first place, to placate some idiots in his party, who then proceeded to undermine him throughout the campaign with frankly lies, inspired by an individual who had previously spent most of his working life in Russia. I understand why Cameron resigned; Brexit wasn't something he believed in, because it was idiotic, and has probably doomed the UK as a unitary state. Useful idiots indeed.

Not all of them. One could have gone to 6th Form college (Labour Party reform in the mid-70s); 2 years NI credited. Then 3 years undergrad, on a full grant (zero NI, unless you got a summer job), then postgrad (zero NI, no summers off), paid by the state. Then a job in the US, followed by middle east. Come back elderly, sick and impoverished because you've blown the lot on a wild life. Straight away get full NHS cover. You won't have much of a state pension, because you never paid in, but you will be entitled to pensioner's credit. NHS cover is nothing to do with how much you pay in, otherwise you are denying treatment for the chronically sick.

Parrot whoosh. Sarcasm doesn't travel. But certainly, you are nearer the end than the beginning. My dad pegged it 2 years ago, aged 82. You forgot Smallpox outbreaks in Bradford, London bombsites, 50s rationing, Union Movement, Mods v Rockers fights every bank holiday monday, Myrah Hindley and Ian Brady, 10 Rimington Place, Billy Graham, Cuban missile crisis, the Great Smog, the Great Flood of 53, Suez, Korea, Mau Mau. Drugs? The mods were into poppers; drug culture started with your post-war generation, and then you all went on strike in the 70s and became communists or joined the NF. Extra dark rose tinted spectacles I suspect, due to too much sun. The world you described in the 1950/60s is a fiction. HMT Empire Windrush landed its famous load of passengers in 1948, mostly to help out in the nascent NHS, drive the buses that had no drivers, build the council houses where there were no builders. All to help people enjoy their rock and roll, colour tellies (you must have been from a very wealth background to enjoy that, no wonder you lived in a 100% white environment), having consequence-free sex (with Caribbean and Indian nurses no doubt helping to clean you up from that dose of the clap). The only people trying to convert me are the god bothering Holy Joes from the Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormon Church banging on my door. I enjoy the ensuing banter as I eviscerate their beliefs and their book, in a polite manner. I'd do the same with others, but they keep to themselves it seems.