I'm assuming that they've not been to a "normal" UK carehome now.
Its staffed with minimum wage workers who are in perilous conditions, with no support, time or backup. They are cleaning shit a piss all day long, and being shouted at for being foreign by the demented.
Not much different than the US, really. I had to hire some at-home care for a relative with brain cancer, and almost all of them were drunk on the job, falling asleep when they were supposed to be monitoring at night, or getting offended at something their patient said, who's mental state resembles that of a psychotic 8 year old. Oh and if you don't lock shit up, some of them will steal.
At a certain point, you fire so many there aren't any left in the area. I moved my relative to another area for unrelated reasons, but it was the same story at the new place too.
There were a few really good ones tbh, but 95% were in private care because nobody else would hire them.
We just finished a 6-week period where my mother-in-law was cared for at home 24/7 by personal assistants, with three shifts per day. Whole dumb, long story on why we had to do this, and I am very glad it is over (she's in memory care now), but I can say:
First, the PAs from the agency who employed them did a better job than we could have. Most of them were current nurses picking up extra money or former nurses who had retired from active work. Save for one who was new to the job and clearly in over her head (and removed from the account after one short shift), they were all competent and conscientious caregivers, if maybe struggling personally one way or another. Not a job anyone chooses to do, I suspect, but one they're often driven to by circumstance.
Second, that kind of care is prohibitively expensive long-term. The memory care facility costs 25% to 30% of the in-home care, and is far safer. We got lucky and had access to a smaller facility with a very low resident-to-staff ratio.
In the US, at least, I don't see the prospects for this kind of care getting anything but worse. I worry that once the Baby Boomer volume of elders passes through the system, the capital that has swallowed so much of elder care up will pull out and a lot of it will collapse and what survives won't be particularly good or affordable, even compared to current levels.
Did you go through an agency or a private hire? I took care of my dad in his final months during Covid. The hospital gave him Covid and then forcibly discharged him, so none of the agencies wanted to deal with him. I was able to find someone who wanted direct work and who was not daunted by the 'rona. They were fantastic. But of course one person can't do every day or around the clock care. I had another great mother+daughter+third care team lined up for when it was time to ramp up even more (they had taken care of my uncle), but (un)fortunately I never got quite there.
Agencies. I ended up doing private hires, which was a little nerve-wracking since I didn't have somebody doing background checks, etc. One of them was a total scammer who I probably should have reported for fraud, but the others ended up being really good and went above and beyond.
We see this in UK prisons too, because the pay is so low, the work is dangerous and conditions are kinda shit there's now an increasing amount of hybristophiliacs (people attracted to criminals) being found within the service, who start up romantic relationships with prisoners and corrupt the service. It's harder to weed these people out when you're desperate for staff.
The solution is to pay these positions well enough to attract people who genuinely believe in the profession. But society optimises away from doing that because there's no obvious ROI outside of making running costs cheaper.
Great, and I do agree, we know who to pay more (and who less), but how do we get there democratically? Should we vote for the party that says "we support LGBT and an infinite influx of cheap labor" or the "we support the military and the free market" party?
I think its one of those ones where we don't fix it because the market conditions of democracy can never justify spending that money in terms of prisons and most families of people who need care see limited value in spending more for an experience they don't receive. Improved spending in prisons only works in nordic societies because of laws that would never pass elsewhere, mostly allowing ex-convicts to not disclose their past (with some exemptions for sensitive jobs). You need that because the ROI in spending more on prisons is rehabilitation into society (which saves you the money on re-offending), but most other societies don't accept that and the maths is long term.
So we'll get the robots instead and the cries in response to the horrors of malfunction, will not be heard because the victims are politically weak. I only hope we never do this in education.
NFS diskless was easier for me to setup when I was doing it.
THe caveat was, you needed readonly root, so that meant freezing the OS, anything that needed changing was either stored in a ram disk (that you need to setup) or a per host nfs area (kinda like overlayfs, but not)
> which is probably non-compliance because it adds friction.
You're gonna have to point to part of the regulation where thats not allowed. there is a mechanism for deletion. so long as its done within 30 days its still within spec
I don't know it inside out but I'm following the basic standard "it should be as easy to withdraw consent as give it"
The overall point being that if you want to use a product/service, you'll look past minor violations of local regulations on account deletion or charger bundling.
I'm not talking about that. The government waives multiple taxes for the scheme. Off the top of my head, no VAT on the car purchases, no luxury tax on vehicles worth £40k+, no insurance tax, no VED (road tax).
The scheme has cost billions in lost revenue and it's the only reason it can exist. The exact accounting is up for debate because it's complex but nonetheless.
There are / were no £40k+ cars available on Motability
Can't find it now but there's a breakdown of the cars supplied somewhere and even when small BMWs etc were available very few people chose them - most people chose smaller average cars
Motability also plays a huge role in priming the used car market in the UK - without them there would be less choice and cars would be more expensive
Of course, thats why I've been clear all my assumptions are for 260wh/mi, which I think is a very fair middle ground figure to compare to a 35mpg car - one can pick far more fuel efficient gas cars for this comparison too, the possibilities are endless.
I think your numbers still illustrate the same point though; if you can't charge at home, an EV is not necessarily cheaper to fuel, and the gap between the public charger price and the cost to a private consumer with home charging is still far too big. 98p vs 15p is staggering.
If you charge at home, and you don't have a car tariff, it'll be ~25-30p per kwhr
If you get a car charging tariff then you'll be paying ~9p a kwhr.
if you are brave then you can use an agile prices which depends on the weather you can be paid to charge (my record was -11p a unit) however in winter it can be a lot high, like 45p a unit.
Charging on the street can be around 50p a kwhr up to 98p a kwhr
> And you can claim you have anxiety in order to get a brand new Audi.
You're gonna have to cite sources on that one, but I would sincerely doubt that £77 a week will allow you to lease an Audi.
Also the pip claimant has to be probed by a panel every three years to keep getting the benefit, unlike say a state pension (but I paid for that I mean possibly you did, its still a non means tested benefit, unlike PIP)
Personally I'm more pissed off about pensioners on final salary still getting state pension, even though they don't need it. Thats far more fucking expensive and doesn't serve a purpose, well apart from buying votes. means test that shit, right now.
What I mean is that if salary sacrifice schemes on EV were only used, and very good deals, for people over 100k then it would be extremely niche as we're talking about the top 4% of earners whereas about 16% are higher band taxpayers...
People on higher salaries are disproportionately likely to be the ones doing it though - much much more likely to work for companies that implement the schemes for a start.
Yes, "higher salaries" as in higher tax band (median salary is 39k, higher tax band starts at 50k), which impacts 16% of people. That's why it has an notable impact on sales and also on the used cars market (salary sacrifice schemes are usually PCP/leasing over 3-4 years).
Perhaps it is the "London bubble" on HN as I feel that no-one is registering that 100k+ is a really, really small minority...
Its staffed with minimum wage workers who are in perilous conditions, with no support, time or backup. They are cleaning shit a piss all day long, and being shouted at for being foreign by the demented.
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