http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Envirowise is calling on businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure people do not waste water.

It is advising companies to use teapots instead of making individual cups of tea, and hopes to re-introduce tea urns to the workplace.

They say that the moves will cut greenhouse gas emissions and, in turn, help businesses to save money.

Envirowise, which is funded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, estimates that more than 30 billion cups of water are unnecessarily boiled each year.

In a statement it tells businesses: “Appoint a tea task force or tea monitor to make sure all your office hot drink-making facilities are as efficient as they could be. Only boil the water you use – this will avoid water and energy being wasted.”

They go on to say that employees should use a teapot when making a round of hot drinks as this “allows you to measure the correct amount of water you will need, and often tastes nicer than making tea in the cup.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

Coastguards have been banned from using flares in rescue missions after they were ruled to be a risk to health and safety.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency says the devices, which are used to illuminate large areas of land and sea during night-time searches, could cause ‘considerable injury’.

Rescue teams have been told to use ’safer’ alternatives such as torches and night-vision goggles during land-based cliff and beach rescues.

All 400 Coastguard rescue teams now have until the end of the year to use up their cache of flares or hand them over to the Ministry of Defence for disposal.

Yesterday volunteers claimed the decision will put lives at risk because flares are essential for locating lost people and vessels in the dark.

One crewman said: ‘This is the most stupid, ignorant thing I’ve heard of. Flares light up the entire sky and aid rescue missions – something that obviously can’t be done with a hand-held torch.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/…

Restaurants could be made to reveal on menus how much, if any, of their service charge is paid to waiting staff. The measure will be among proposals announced next week to ensure that diners know what happens to their tips, The Times has learnt.

Some establishments keep all gratuities, while others – particularly restaurant chains – funnel tips into waiters’ basic wages. Ministers have already pledged to close a loophole that allows restaurants and hotels to use service charges to top up pay rates beneath the minimum wage, currently £5.73 an hour.

Next week they will publish proposals for greater information on what happens to discretionary charges, typically 10 per cent or 12.5 per cent.

The consultation comes after negotiations between the industry and the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform.

A senior figure involved in the talks said: “People leaving a gratuity assume that it’s going to the person that served them – they have a right to know whether that’s the case.”

http://online.wsj.com/…

Central banks around the world pumped short-term cash into strained money markets for the second day in a row Tuesday as markets reeled amid a fast-moving crisis that is reshaping the contours of the global financial system.

With interest rates on the overnight loans banks make to one another rising sharply on market unease, European policy makers boosted the amount of funds on offer. The European Central Bank injected €70 billion ($100.17 billion) in one-day funds into euro-zone money markets, more than double its Monday injection of €30 billion. The Bank of England offered £20 billion ($36.05 billion) in extra two-day funds, atop Monday’s £5 billion in extra three-day funds.

The Swiss National Bank also made extra overnight funds available, but a spokesperson declined to say how much. The Bank of Japan injected ¥2.5 trillion ($23.84 billion) into Japanese money markets in two separate operations.

Demand surged as commercial banks scrambled for short-term cash. Bids from 56 financial institutions totaled more than €102 billion in the ECB’s auction, which set the central bank’s policy rate of 4.25% as the minimum bid rate. The Bank of England said bids totaled £58.1 billion, more than triple the £20 billion on offer.

Think of this kind of action as someone kicking the side of a kiddie pool in order to try to counteract the waves created by someone inside it… without being able to see the water’s movement. You don’t have enough information to cancel it out. You’ll just make the water more turbulent.

The best thing the central banks and governments can do is nothing.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that kidney patients taking the new drug Sutent lived six months longer than those prescribed alpha interferon, the NHS treatment.

The failure of the NHS to make more effective drugs available to cancer patients has been condemned as “unethical” by leading doctors.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

Lee over at MooreWatch.com I think said it all: “This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.”

When will these people realize that the government can not negate scarcity? The only thing that can bring more and better healthcare to the masses is an increase in their wealth and the only way to do that is capital accumulation through free market capitalism.

http://news.scotsman.com/…

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual check-ups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44% of the entire population.

Those exceeding government limits and suffering from a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if, after three months, they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered towards further re-education after six more months.

The limits of 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks.

To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10% over the next four years and 25% over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets. The country’s Ministry of Health argues that the campaign will keep the spread of diseases like diabetes and strokes in check.

With the new law, Matsushita has to measure the waistlines of not only its employees but also their families and pensioners. As part of its intensifying efforts, the company has started giving its employees “metabo check” towels that double as tape measures.

Companies like Matsushita must measure the waistlines of at least 80% of their employees and get 10% of those deemed metabolic to lose weight by 2012.

NEC, Japan’s largest maker of PCs, said that if it failed to meet its targets, it could incur £9.7m in penalties.

Penalties and re-education for being too fat? What exactly would this re-education entail? I’d imagine it’s not optional and the fines will just be passed on to the general public.

This whole “problem” goes away by letting people be responsible for themselves and their healthcare.

http://www.moorewatch.com/…

It’s the latest socialized medicine success!

Tens of thousands of English patients could be registering with Welsh GPs and making day-trips to the country to obtain free prescriptions, it was claimed yesterday.

Statistics show that three million people are registered with Welsh GPs, about 100,000 more than the official population. Wales is the only part of Britain not to have prescription charges.

England has the highest at £7.10, followed by Northern Ireland at £6.85 and Scotland at £5.

The Conservative Party in Wales claimed that the figures pointed to patients from England travelling to Wales and called on the Welsh Assembly executive to stop “prescription tourism”.

The copay in Englad is roughly the same as the prescription copay that I have with my eeeeeevil kapitalist for-profit US health insurance.  The only difference is that I have access to a wider range of newer, higher-quality drugs than the English.  And I don’t have to travel to Wales to avoid paying for it.

Oh, lest anyone get the wrong idea, I live in Beijing.  I pay, every month, out of my own pocket, for US healthcare, so that I can get prescriptions which are not available here in China’s socialist paradise.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?  When I want something I (gasp!) pay for it.

What else should you expect? Remove prices and you remove the signals required to accurately gauge value and resource allocation. People will take advantage of it every time. Had this been a free market the prices would equalize very quickly if there had been a discrepancy at all in the first place.

More than four in ten maternity units turn away women in labour

Maternity units are turning away women in labour because they have no room, figures show.

More than four in ten NHS hospitals refused to accept expectant mothers at least once last year.

The figures, from 103 of the 147 NHS trusts with maternity services, were obtained by the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act.

They show that almost one in ten trusts closed more than ten times last year.

And the University of Leicester Hospitals Trust – one of the biggest NHS providers – closed 28 times.

In all, 43 trusts said they had closed their maternity unit, or had been forced to send women to another hospital, at least once in 2007 because they were full.

Lung patients ‘condemned to death as NHS withdraws their too expensive drugs’ 

Hundreds of patients with a rare lung disease will be sentenced to death by plans to stop doctors prescribing a range of drugs on the NHS, it was claimed last night.

Campaigners have condemned proposals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to withdraw the drugs because they are too expensive.

The condition, pulmonary hypertension, affects an estimated 4,000 people in the UK.

Yet the plans by NICE, the Government’s drug rationing body, mean no life-extending therapies will be available to new patients because the cost of the most expensive exceeds its threshold of £30,000 per head.

NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she’s ‘too old’ for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery

A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.

Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.

The school secretary was stunned by the ruling.

“I can’t believe that at 61 I’m too old for this operation,” she said.

At least the grandmother story has a happy ending. All the media exposure force the governments hand. Now she’ll get the surgery.