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Doing business with India

9 March 2010

We can help you export British and European Economic Area goods to India. We have good connections there as well as an insight into consumer tastes, behaviour, economic and political conditions there, etc.

17 February 2010

This evening, I bought some ready made "Organic vegetarian Moroccan spiced falafel, houmous, gherkins, white and brown pita bread, tahini, Onken set yogurt imported from Germany, rocket salad, red onions, cucumber and tomatoes from a supermarket and tried to make a sandwich with a coke in my kitchen. It took me over an hour and it was a complete waste of time and money.

The falafels tasted disgusting after 15 minutes in the oven. After that, I tried to fry the second packet I had bought. Again, it tasted aweful. Tomorrow I am returning them to the supermarket to get my money back.

But this experience makes me wonder: thousands of mothers spend hundred of pounds in supermarkets every week and then clean, unpack, cut, garnish, spice, heat, cook, then eat, and finally wash up dishes, pots and pans and yet end up wasting purchased foods, fruits and vegetables that have gone bad up to an average of £50 a week for each household, year in, year out. I forgot sweeping the kitchen floor and clearing the garbage bag. I also forgot the waste of gas, electricity, hot water, dish washer liquid, cloth wipes, etc.

I believe it is far fresher, and far more economical to just find the right restaurants for the right type of cuisines you enjoy and have at least 50% of all your meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner, eating out.

That is what I am going to do from tomorrow. Just think: economies of scale can be achieved by a small restaurant cooking for many as much as by a giant supermarket with their bland monotonous foods, foods miles, jaggernauts, and round the world carbon foot prints.



17 September 2009 - Thursday (Amended Monday 21092009)

APPOINTMENT SYSTEM REDUCED TO 30% AND WALK IN SYSTEM INTRODUCED FOR 70%

The choice by patient to chose a GP who may not live in his or her local area and find a GP further afield is welcome and is the right policy move.

The number of GPs has increased from 89,000 in 1985 to 109,000 in 1995, a rend increase of a staggering 23% while the health of the nation has remained the same.

The structure of GP practices has also changed drastically from smaller practices to ever larger practices, while the quality of service did deteriorate spasmodically between 1985 and 1995. Similar assessment needs to be done between 1995 and 2005.

During that time, the number of sole GP went down 4%; Two GPs (one location) down 7%; 3 GPs partnership (1 or 1+ location) down 19%; Four GPs practice went up 10%; Five GPs practices went up 20% and Six GPs and Six or than six GPs with profit sharing arrangement (location not relevant)went up by a staggering 66%.

Most bright school leavers now chose to be a GP, or a dentist, or an optician because there is a lot of personal income in it and it has become a highly commercialized activity, but in a name.

Privatisation of GPs practices, lock, stock and barrel, should be offered by the Government on a volunary basis as a matter of their choice.

Nationalisation of GPs practices who wish to remain under the umbrella of NHS to be paid on a PAYE basis should be offered by the Government on a voluntary basis to save costs and improve delivery and solve the current Fiscal Budget Deficit. In the long run both the GP and the patient will end up in a win-win scenario. As matters stand now, they are all on the gravy train and have the best of both worlds, having the cake and eating it, esp. the more specialised GPs who have become consultants in Harley Street and in NHS hospitals.

Health care profession is not a vocation that is suitable for maximization of profit.

The optimum number of GPs in our opinion is 3-GPs or 4-GPs as a maximum so that most of the time the patient sees the same GP most of the time.

My own GP, Celia Bengam, in Cornwall Avenue in Finchley Central used to come and visit me in the middle of the night in an emergency or I used to go and see her and the understanding was long term.

Nowadays the reception waiting area of my Torrington Park Health Clinic in North Finchley is like a cattle market where patients are processed within 5 to 10 minutes each. You can not have an regular appointment less the 21 days ahead during summer months when most GPs take their holidays.

GPs are paid by the number of patients on their books. Often the patient remains on their books months or years after they are gone abroad for good.

The number of patients is the most important number that should be in public domain in every GP practice, as well as the average number of patients seen during the previous year per eac GP partner.

That way a patient has choice to chose a less greedy or a more greedy General Physician (GP is an acronym for Gerneral Physician), or one who is of average greed.

Copyright: Nagin Khajuria 2009
11 Sept 2009 - Friday

The world has woken up to day to the memories of 09/11 8 years ago. What was it all about?

Was it about money and sharing the planet's natural and economic resources?

Was it about population numbers? 6 billion rising to 9 billion?

Was it about oil and gas? Christians need and use more oil and gas; Muslims need and use less oil and gas.

Was it centuries old rivalry between Christians and Muslim? or Christianity and Islam? Christians practice marriage and divorce more often; Muslims are allowed more than one wife under Sharia Law. Quran says beware of alcohol and gambling. Christians say beware of binge drinking and addictive gambling. Which is better?

Was it between those who hold democratic values and principles and those who do not?

Was it between haves and have nots?

Islam is splt mainly between Sunnis and Shias. Population wise Sunnis are 10 times Shias.

"Sunna" means path or listen. They follow the path of Momammed and the Quran. Sunnis currently number about 930 million, that is almost 1 billion. They are mainly in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, Malasia, Indonesia, etc.


Shias, follow the path of Ali, and they are found in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Aga Khan is the head of the "Khoja" or "Ismaili" Shia sect. They number about 200 million.

Protestant Christians number about 632 million. This number also includes Lutherans, Presbyterieans and Reformed, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, and some other small groups. They are found in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand maily.

Catholics Christians number about 1,260 million or about 1.2 billion. They are found mainly in Europe, Central and South America, Asia, Africa.

Orthodox Christians number about 260,000 million. They are mainly found in Russia or former Russian countries. They include Coptic Christains that are found in Egypt and Ethiopia.

The above numbers or locations are not exact, but probably more accurate than what you may find being spun around in mainstream media by conflicting interest groups.

Thus the total number of Muslims in the world as at present are likely to be about 1.2 billion compared to 2 billion Christians. The former are mostly of brown skin colour. The latter are mostly of fair skin colour.

What is your opinion? Saudi Arabian citizens carried out the 09/11 atrocities. Osama bin Laden was born of Yemini parents. Osama bin Laden's family were great friends of the Saudi royal family as well as the Bush family in U.S. Osam was armed by the US military to oust Russians from Afghanisatn. Pakistanis are known to be involved in training people involved. The over 2,000 kilometre border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was really the border between India and Afghanistan for hundreds of years before India was divided into three countries about 60 years ago.

Who done it is still a mystery to me; so is why it was done; so is what was the hidden agenda?





Thursday, 10 Sept 2009 LBC Radio versus BBC 4 Radio programs

This mornings news from LBC were much better than BBC Radio 4. I enjoyed listening to Mr Barak Obama's speech in part on proposed reform of the healthcare.

In the Bible, it is mentioned that man's life spans 3 scores and 10. This is no longer true. It now spans 4 scores and 10 to those who live in developed countries.

May be we should not do any more research into medicine to prolong life further. As it is, life after 70 is very costly from healthcare point of view. So is the first birth of a child time and the first 5 years of a child. Healthcare then is very expensive. Should the latter be the case? Are we over immunising our infants?

What is primary care? It is meant to stop healthcare users from approaching secondary care as GPs are supposed to be the gatekeepers who would not refer you to a specialist unless it was absolutely vital. Is there not a lot of duplication of human resources, medical equipment and facilities, land and buildings, etc. when we have this arbitrary split between "primary care" and "secondary care"? Or is the GP (or is it PG Tips?) secondary care and the specialist in the hospital primary care?

Can not public sector GPs be PAYE employees and be housed in hospitals rather than have lavish little empires of their own, so called "surgeries" each earning £100,000+ net individually after tax and never working week ends or evenings? Please rethink before UK government defaults its long term interest payments.

Then there is tertiary care: nursing homes, own homes where elederly live on their own and care homes where also elderly people live. What is it? Again, the way government spends money between so called primary care, secondary care and tertiary care is so arbitrary that it has become such a mucking fuddle, it beggars belief with so many professors, so many academics, so many research and development bodies.

The total cost when you add up NHS at £100 billion plus, social provision at another £100 billion and personal services at another £35 billion, is £235 billion. This could be reduced by at least £100 billion if careful planning and implementation is done by a concensus between Gordon Brown and David Cameroom. Instead, they are arguing about cutting the number of MPs by 10% to solve the fiscal, trade and balance of payment deficits. I wonder whether a State of Emergency should be declared and the 2010 election be postponed. What do you think?
Recently there has been conflicting debate about NHS. One group is arguing that NHS system is the best in the world and should be the modus operandi for the entire UK population.

Another group is arguing that NHS is sick and needs to be privatised up to about 30% because this group is sufficiently wealthy to be able to genuinely afford to pay for private medical insurance and/or directly for private medical care.

Which group should be listened to in UK's General Election to be held in May 2010? Which political class will have the courage of including in their manifesto their advice as to which direction UK healthcare provision should move over the next say 50 years? Rome was not built in a day. Thus NHS cannot be rebuild in day.

Because of the special relationship with United States, and because of the commonality of the English language, should we look towards experts in medical healthcare from U S A, or U S educated experts, or should UK now study the healthcare systems in Europe or say India, to come up some long term answers?

Abount 20 years ago, U S experts were approached to advise NHS policy makers on how to go about reforming the NHS. Their advice was to introduce the concept of the market system within the NHS. Fundholding and other reforms were introduced as a result of their advice. That experiment was tried over several years and it was found that a lot of did not work well. Eventually it was abandoned.

John Humphreys of BBC Radio 4 in mid-August 2009 sought advice from a U S expert on how to deal with far higher incidence of sick leave in NHS compared to other public and private sector bodies. Are we repeating the same mistake of looking towards U S experts for reform the NHS?

So, how could the NHS be privatised up to 30%?

We believe the US model is not workable in the UK as it the most costly system in the entire world and yet it ignores almost 50 million uninsured people out of a population of about 250 million.

If we compare the NHS model to some of similar EU countries such as Germany, France, Italy, or Spain, what we see is that although expenditure as a per centage of GDP could be similar, the proportion of this percentage relating to private medical care in these countries is far higher than the UK.

According to the Office of Health Economics, the breakdown in 1994 was as below:

% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health spending was:

Germany public sector 7% + private sector 2.1% = Germany total health spend 9.1% of GDP in 1994;

France: public sector 7.6% of GDP + privat sector 2.1% of GDP = France total health spent 9.7% of GDP in 1994;

Italy 5.9% + 2.4% = 8.8% of GDP in 1994;

Spain public sector 5.7% + 1.6% = 7.3% of GDP in 1994.

UK public sector 5.8% + privat sector 1.1% = U K total health spend in 1994 was 6.9% of GDP.

The European countries have had better healthcare since 1994 compared to UK because the private sector had taken on a greater burden.

In 1994, US spent far higher percentage of GDP on healthcare: public 6.3%; private 8.0 per cent, total 14.3% of US GDP. Despite such huge costs, almost 20% of the population receive very poor free medical care. Profit element could be very high or there could be a lot of waste or corruption in the US or a bit of both.

We are of the opinion that the pharmaceutical and medical profession, as suppliers and employer protection bodies, has had vested interest to maintain high costs, rather than spend a far higher proportion of these massive costs in teaching people how to live sensibly and lead a more healthy work/life balance so you need less healthcare.

USA & UK has similar healthcare problems

In 24/08/09 issue of the Financial Times, Clive Crook says the following:

"The selling of healthcare reform has been marked from the start by indecision, both on substance and on tactics, and by an extraordinary lack of clarity. The country still does not know what Mr Obama is advocating. Much of the time, apparently, neither does he."

Gordon Brown or David Cameroon also really do not know how to reform NHS exactly the same way as Mr Obama.

"The second thing that needs to happen, though, is that Mr Obama must start being honest about costs."

Again, Mr Brown and Mr Cameroon must start by being honest about the fact that NHS is UNSUSTAINABLE as is now and needs major reform fast.

"If universal coverage requires an increase in taxes, this obliges the administration to tell the median voter – who already has employer-provided health insurance – what he gets in return. "

Universal coverage in the UK for free medical treatment, for universal child benefit, for universal state pension, for universal welfare benefits, for universal care for the elderly, are all unsustainable. Means testing needs to be done to a far greater extent than has ever been done up to now in a systematic and fair and just way.