Friday 26 July 2013

£25 to see your GP: Majority of doctors want to charge patients for routine appointments

'The ideal of an NHS free at the point of need was dealt a serious blow today, as a survey of family doctors revealed unprecedented levels of support for charging patients for routine appointments.
For the first time in recent memory, more than half of GPs believe patients should pay fees to see their doctor. The majority of those in favour said that charges should be between £5 and £25 per appointment.
Doctors say that patient demand has become unmanageable and warn that changes to GP contracts have heaped more work on them without increasing their funding. But patients said that GPs were threatening the “founding principles” of the NHS.'

Silent communities increase terror threat, police chief warns

'Fanatics and “lone wolf” terrorists will be free to carry out more deadly attacks on Britain’s streets if the public do not come forward with more tip-offs, Metropolitan deputy assistant commissioner Stuart Osborne said.
He warned the attack threat is becoming smaller and less complex which means they are harder to detect but are still deadly. He said every major plot in recent years has involved innocent people who knew something about the plan but never tipped off the police.'

Emergency Exit – Greeks flee country as government resorts to mass layoffs

'Greece entered the world financial crisis in 2008 with less than 10 percent of the country’s labor force out of work. Today, more than a quarter of the population is left without jobs and with no apparent chance of getting one. The latest figures from the finance ministry show another 23 percent doesn’t earn enough to stay above the poverty line. And, as RT’s Egor Piskunov reports, Greeks are now looking elsewhere for their future.'

The Biggest Oil Discovery In 50 Years?

'In a virtually uninhabitable section of South Australia, a discovery has been made which could rock the world. Some are calling it the biggest discovery of oil in 50 years. Earlier this year, a company called Linc Energy announced that tests had revealed that there was a minimum of 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent sitting under more than 65,000 square kilometres of land that it owns in the Arckaringa Basin. But that is the minimum number.
It has been projected that there could ultimately be up to 233 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the area. If that turns out to be accurate, the oil sitting under that land is worth approximately 20 trillion dollars, and it would be roughly equivalent to the total amount of oil sitting under the sands of Saudi Arabia. In essence, it would be a massive game changer.'