Not if the charity director earns over £100,000 per year! I would definitely not give to any charity where a large proportion of money is spent on administration, governance, overheads and so on. If I give money, I want it to be spent on the cause they say they are collecting for and not on admin, stamps and coffee machines.

Unfortunately, in many countries, including the UK, some think it is perfectly acceptable to milk charities as cash cows. Many organizations and charities collect in the name of whatever cause but in the end they spend only a fraction of what they raised on that cause.

If thinking about donating to government run foundations in third world countries, think again. The money or gift you donate will most likely end up in the wrong hands. Third parties will embezzle your donation, take part of your donation and sell it for a profit, or simply keep it all giving nothing to the needy.

One good example is what happened after the Hungarian sludge disaster. According to a report by Nepszava, almost 2 billion (2000 million) Hungarian forints were collected after the disaster to help the local residents, but seven months later still only 155 million(!), less than 10% was spent on helping the needy.

That is incredible! And it is still not clear what the rest was spent on. There were demonstrations by locals to release the money or records of what happened to it, to no avail. So it is best to help by yourself, take the gift to the person who actually need it and put in their hands. Be it money or anything else, don’t trust a third party to deliver it.

Also, if you deliver something yourself, you will have the opportunity to see how the people you are about to help live and they will be able to thank you personally.

If you decide to help charities and donate to them, always check their financial releases and see what they spend on overheads. If that is over 5-10%, just give it a miss. I help Centrepoint, the homeless youth charity where they only spend about 0.8% of expenditure on governance. That is, about £80,000 per annum.

Charity from Wikipedia

Yes. Not all branches will give you money though, in some you will have to argue with staff because most of them are retards and they do not know the rules. I have been to several countries and used any bank card to withdraw money from any branch, so I knew there should be no problem with using my Kalixa top up card to withdraw money in a branch.

If you can use a card to withdraw money from an ATM, you should be able to withdraw money in a branch as well. A branch is like a big ATM building, so anyone who tells you that you cannot withdraw money, only from an ATM, is wrong.

I went to Lloyds TSB and they refused to give me money even though I have an account with them. She said that they cannot give cash advances on cash top-up cards. I told her that she was wrong, so she asked her colleague. That was the first sign that she did not know what she was talking about. Her colleague did not know either so they said that I could not and that I had to use a cash machine.

I left really fed up. I went to Barclays because I have a Barclaycard. They refused again saying that they could give me money from my credit card – which would cost a fortune in interest and withdrawal fee – but with my Kalixa cash card I would need to use the ATM.

I argued with her as well to no avail.

I left and went to HSBC. They refused again, actually the machine refused because they have no staff only an automated system.

I nearly gave up and went to the cash machine. It refused as well!!! I thought it was unbelievable, everyone was against me. So I went outside and queued up at another machine, but the guy in front of me was taking the piss so long I decided to give Halifax a last try.

It worked! The new girl did not ask any questions, took my card, asked for another ID, swiped it and counted the money into my hand! What idiots at the other branches honestly!

They don’t know what they are talking about, but they still argue and would not even try to swipe my card. They just refused outright.

I came home and checked my Kalixa account and there was nothing wrong, they deducted the money and it was actually free of charge, so it is much better to go to a branch in any country then to use the ATM, because it is free.

This is probably why the banks and Kalixa don’t advertise it and why the first three banks refused to honour my request.

Kalixa Cash Card

The bendy buses have been taken off London’s streets in December because the hop-on, hop-off style of the bendy buses, with few checks on tickets, had encouraged thousands of people to avoid paying, said Transport for London and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Instead of the bendy buses, they have designed the new Routemaster bus (video below) with the same hop-on, hop-off design. The mayor’s and TfL’s main argument against the bendy bus (a Hungarian invention) was that too many fair dodgers cheated the system. I wonder what will deter fare dodgers from hopping on and off the new Routemaster double-decker buses? Surely, they won’t be checked more often than they were on the bendy buses?!?

Or is there going to be some magical, invisible conductor on the Routemaster buses 24/7? The video below explains that there will only be a conductor on the buses in peak hours, so off-peak anyone can cheat. I think this is total hypocrisy to say that we should take one service off the road because too many people cheat on it, then start another service with just as much potential for cheating.

I know of plenty of countries where the bendy bus is used and, in fact, most European countries opted in favor of the bendy buses and took off all the double-deckers from the roads after the war because they are not fuel efficient and cannot go under most low bridges. While in Edinburgh, under the freedom of information act I requested information on fuel consumption of the double-deckers and it turns out they burn 40-50 liters of fuel every 100 kilometers and they do only 10-15 kilometers per hour within the city limits.

Now, according to BBC, TfL predicts it would increase its takings by £7.4m because fare-evasion would become harder once the bendy buses are taken out of service. I wonder how, though, will they suceed using the same hop-on, hop-off system on Boris’ favourite Routemaster buses.

The New London Routemaster Bus

To save or not to save?

Just finished watching an interesting documentary on BBC about how the west went bust. Not much new stuff in it about the crisis and recession, but still interesting to see the massive difference between how western and eastern people think.

I have thought a lot about why so many people in the west prefer to take on massive mortgages and credit card debt. If these people sat down and thought it through, they would realise that they are paying a lot more to have everything NOW, instead of saving for a while and have it a bit LATER.

Watching the Chinese people talk about how much they save (30-50% of their salaries) it made me laugh seeing their UK counterparts save zilch! Those who earn hardly anything save half their wages, but those that earn five-ten times the Chinese average wage spend it all, what’s more, they overspend.

Just an example: If I wanted to buy a house in the UK, I could get a mortgage for 125K for 25 years. But with interest and fees over 25 years the total amount I would have to pay back is more than 200K.

Now, if I saved 500 pounds every month, within 21 years I would have 125K, probably even earlier because my savings (and the bank) would pay ME interest and not the other way around. For 21 years I could live in a rented property. I know you need to earn a certain amount of money to be able to save 500 a month, but if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend it is not that difficult to put aside 250 quid each. If you cut back on your other expenses like drinking, smoking, partying every weekend and wasting your money on clothes you never wear, shoes you put on once, and instead of having all the latest gadgets, you could put that money in your savings account and buy a property even faster.

If your combined income is 30K per annum (that is 15K per person) you can easily save more than 500 a month. But even if you save for ten years only, the amount of mortgage you need to take on will be a lot smaller which you can easily afford even with a smaller salary.

Now, how is it possible that a Chinese guy can save half his wages with the same proportion of outgoings as a westerner, still someone in the first world has to borrow to support his lifestyle on phenomenal wages?…

I have had a WordPress site for nearly a year now and I have been using Google Analytics for just about the same amount of time as well. I have a self-hosted WordPress site hosted by HostGator. I use the Jetpack plugin to track visitor data and also HostGator’s most advanced statistics page. However, none of them offer as many options as Google Analytics.

With Google I can check the most popular pages, articles, click through rates, visitor trending and so. My biggest problem with Google is that there is a massive discrepancy between the visitor numbers Hostgator and WordPress registers and what Google Analytics shows. Hostgator and WordPress are nearly exactly the same, only about a hundred visitor difference between the two sites.

However, Google’s numbers are always out of line with Hostgator and WordPress. In numbers that translates to about 20-30% fewer visitors registered by Google than by the other two. As an example, if I have 3000 visitors showing in Hostgator for a given period of time, Google only shows around 2000-2500. This is a bit disappointing, because this means I am not getting correct information from Google which would be pretty useful since I use Analytics nearly every day.

Anyone knows what to do to get the correct information from Google? Would really appreciate if someone could solve this mystery for me. I have installed all sorts of Google and Analytics plugins on my WordPress site and still nothing’s changed really.

If you have the answer, you can just comment here or start a new thread in the forum!

Thanks!

The Motorcycle Diaries

I have wanted to read this book ever since I have read Ted Simon’s “Jupiter’s Travels”. He was inspired by Che’s book to travel around the world and I was inspired to travel around South America by the movie they have made from Che’s book. So we were all inspired in one way or another by Che Guevara.

I have been to most of the place he has visited apart from Venezuela, but that will soon follow hopefully. I would love to one day meet Hugo Chavez and drive around the country that has the cheapest petrol in the world (4 cents per liter!).

Anyway, back to the book: Can’t wait to finish reading it and write a proper review, hopefully soon!

Dell Call Centre

I have just stumbled upon this funny phone call below to a Dell call centre in the U.S.

I can totally sympathise with the caller, what a moron that call centre agent is!!! Couldn’t he just tell the caller to freaking press the power button and hold it down for ten seconds? That would have saved himself a lot of typing and the caller five minutes of his life! I just hate call centres, especially the stupid Dell call centres.

I once bought a Dell laptop in the U.S. and it broke within two weeks of purchase. I just could not believe it! Every time I called the call centre, I had to give my purchase order number, my computer tag, my name, telephone number, etc, by the third call I was so sick of it. Thankfully the last guy was an honest and -a very rare occurance – normal and he told me after two minutes of conversation that I am better off sending it back. So he gave me another phone number to call the returns department.

I got online next day and spent nearly 2(!!!) hours on the phone. I was transferred I think like five times, from state to state and country to country. By the fifth transfer I was in India. All the while I had to repeat all the stupid codes and tags and numbers. I was so sick and tired, honestly.

Then, I got to the Indian agent who was having his dinner while on the phone. I could not care less to complain. I just repeated my responses like a computer and he jotted down my contact details, including my email address. I had a funny feeling he wrote it down wrong, so I asked him to read it out. Of course he did it all wrong!

Thank goodness I asked because he had to send me an email with a postal delivery order which I had to print and stick on the laptop’s box. If I had not asked, I would have had to go through the two hour torture again! In the end I got a refund to the last penny and they even paid for postage!

Stumble Upon Logo

I have just discovered stumbleupon.com, a great little website where you can look at photos, read articles and just surf the web in old fashioned style! I think google, facebook, twitter cannot provide that sort of sense when you think the internet is bringing information to you. I don’t remember the last time when I learnt anything using solely google, but since I discovered stumble upon, I have learnt loads of new stuff I never knew before.

Like I did not know that there are plans to build a tramway in Washington D.C. which I found out by looking at this photo on stumbleupon.com. I have been to D.C. and did not remember seeing any tracks on any of the streets! So I quickly searched on google and found the link to the streetcar operator’s website.

OK, I used google to search, but without stumble upon I would never have found out about the streetcars.  It is great that you just click on the stumble button and it brings up something that is most likely going to interest you. Unbelievable!

A mai magyar egészségügy egyetlen szerencséje, hogy az idegennyelv tanulás úgy tűnik nem az erőssége a magyaroknak, mert egyébként valószínű, hogy már az összes itthoni orvos valahol külföldön dolgozna.

“Már én is régen leléptem volna, ha kicsit jobban beszélnék angolul, épp ezért most belehúzok az utolsó évem során az angol nyelvtanulásba, hogy jövőre én is el tudjak költözni,” mondta egy nevét nem vállaló végzős egyetemista Budapesten.

Még így is, éves szinten mintegy ezer orvos hagyja el az országot, hogy szerencsét próbáljanak az Európai Unió más, gazdagabb tagországaiban.

Csak tavaly 1111 külföldi munkavállaláshoz szükséges hatósági bizonyítványt állított ki az Egészségügyi Engedélyezési és Közigazgatási Hivatal Migrációs és Monitoring Főosztálya.

A jelentkezők közül 2010-ben az Egyesült Királyságot 339-en, Németországot 307-en, Írországot 79-en, Svédországot 69-en és Ausztriát 52-en jelölték meg célországként.

A Nemzeti Erőforrás Minisztérium Egészségügyért Felelős Államtitkársága hozzátette, hogy a bizonyítványok kérelmezése nem mindig jár elköltözéssel, viszont a külföldi statisztikák mást mutatnak.

Az Egyesült Királyság (Anglia, Skócia, Welsz és Észak-Írország) területén idén Augusztus 30-i adatok szerint 1219 magyar orvos rendelkezik munkavállaláshoz szükséges engedéllyel, mondta el a General Medical Council, az orvosokat regisztráló brit szervezet.

Míg 2004-et megelőzően a Magyar orvoslétszám évente nőtt, addig 2004 után évente átlag 700-al csökkent a Magyaroszágon dolgozó orvosok száma. Ez azzal magyarázható, hogy az uniós csatlakozást követően könnyebbé vált a külföldi munkavállalás.

A statisztika is ezt látszik alátámasztani: a 2004-es 38.877-ről 2010-re 33.943-ra csökkent az itthoni orvosok száma a Központi Statisztikai Hivatal adatai szerint.

Az orvoslétszám még rohamosabban csökkent az elmúlt három év során, amikor már évi majdnem ezer fővel csökkent az itthon élő orvosok száma.

A rendszerváltást követő évek trendje az volt, hogy a Trianon után leszakadt területekről verbuváltak magyar orvosokat, de mivel mostmár ők is uniós tagok, inkább ezek az orvosok is nyugatabbra költöznek ahol akár tízszer annyit is kereshetnek, mint Magyarországon.

Amíg Magyarországon egy kezdő orvos fizetése alig éri el a havi nettó százezer forintot, addig Nagy-Britanniában az Egészségügyi Minisztérium információja szerint egy kezdő orvos fizetése évi 22.000 font (7.238.000 HUF), ami adólevonás után havi 1443 font (474.000 HUF). Ez egy év szakmai gyakorlat után 28.000 fontra emelkedik.

Miután Nagy-Britanniában orvoshiány van, a hiányzó orvosokat külföldről – újabban kelet Európából – próbálják pótolni. A briteknél jelenleg 1858 román, 1841 lengyel, 911 cseh, 720 bolgár és 347 szlovák orvos rendelkezik munkavállaláshoz szükséges bizonyítvánnyal.

“Az NHS (National Health Service – Állami Egészségügy) természetéből fakadóan bizonyos földrajzi és szakterületeken létezhet orvoshiány, amely pótlására valamilyen mértékben nemzetközi munkerő felvételére van szükség,” mondta el a Brit Egészségügyi Minisztérium sajtóosztálya.

Ezek után nem csoda, hogy a magyar orvosok többsége a költözésen gondolkozik.

“Látjuk, hogy azok az ismerőseink, akik már megtették ezt a lépést néhány éve, már autót vesznek, családot alapítanak és lakásra gyüjtenek, mi pedig itthon gürcölünk és nem jutunk egyről a kettőre,” mondta Kovács Levente Koppány, a Rezidens Szövetség budapesti regionális elnöke.

A Rezidens Szövetség ennek fényében demonstrációba kezdett és tömeges felmondást szerveznek az év végére ha az állam nem javít az orvosok helyzetén. A felmondóleveleket letétbe helyezték, és ha nem jutnak megegyezésre akkor a lemondások életbe lépnek január elsején.

“Mi azt szeretnénk, ha jobb körülmények között dolgozhatnánk, betartanák a kórházak a jogszabályokat valamint kifizetnék a túlóráinkat.”

“Ezen felül úgy gondoljuk, hogy egy 200.000 forintos kezdő orvosi, és egy 300.000 forintos kezdő szakorvosi fizetés már itthon tartaná az orvosokat, ezért már megérné több évet tanulni és itthon dolgozni,” tette hozzá Koppány.

Az Egészségügyért Felelős Államtitkárság válaszul felajánlott egy nettó havi 100 ezer forintos ösztöndíjat a szakorvos jelöltek részére.

“A pénzt pályázati úton ösztöndíj formájában kaphatják azok, akik vállalják, hogy a támogatás érdekében a szakképzés befejezését követően legalább annyi ideig fognak Magyarországon dolgozni, amennyi ideig a Szakorvosjelölt Támogatási Program által támogatásban részesültek,” mondta el Pálinkás Ágnes sajtóreferens.

Rácz Jenő, volt egészségügyi miniszter szerint “a kormányzati szinten megindított ösztöndíj programok iránt alig van érdeklődés: most 600 ösztöndíj helyre összesen 122 jelentkező volt, ami szintén azt mutatja, hogy az idei 1000 rezidens nagy része nem itthon tervezi a jövőt.”

“Az, hogy egy kezdőorvos bére jelenleg ugyanannyi, mint egy utcaseprőé nyilván egy abszolút kezelhetetlen társadalmi értékrend kialakulást eredményez,” tette hozzá a volt miniszter.

Mácsai Előd, egy Bristolban elő altatóorvos 2007-ben határozott végleg a költözés mellett, de már nyolc éve hosszabb-rövidebb ideig valamilyen módon kint dolgozott.

“Ha Magyarországon az utóbbi évtizedben néhány kilóméter autópálya építése helyett inkább az egészségügyre költöttek volna egy kicsit többet, most nem lennénk ebben a helyzetben,”

“Én nem tervezek hazamenni, már itt vannak a gyerekeim, és itt sokkal jobb az élet – sőt, inkább ha tehetem, segítek bárkinek eljönni ide ahol jobban megbecsülnek minket, orvosokat.”

Written by: Gál János,

Contributed: Calum Ross

A budapesti jános kórhaz

My first property

Some of my favourite TV programmes have always been those about DIY, house renovation and auctions because watching them I could dream about maybe one day renovating my own house. I am now one step closer to fulfilling this dream as I have purchased my first proper house!

I have had a house before, but I only bought that because my brother did not have enough money himself and he bought it from me later, so I did not carry out any work on that property.

But now, it is all mine, I do whatever I like with it! I have already made some plans how to turn it into a comfortable nice living space. The garden is a little overgrown, the house does not have a bathroom or kitchen fitted, and there is no rendering on the walls so it is basically half-finished which is great because this way I don’t have to tear down the ugly designs of the previous owners.

Since I live in London and the property is in Hungary, it will be a little difficult to look after it, but my brother lives in the same district so he will look after it for me.

Before I bought it, I did my research to find out about taxes, lawyer’s fees, stamp duty etc. Then of course checked my bank account to see I had enough to buy something descent. Having confirmed I had all the money to pay in cash, I started to look around for houses in newspapers, on the internet and on websites of property dealerships.

My brother also told me that there were plenty of houses for sale in the area as many old people were dying there and the living wives, husbands or kids were trying to get rid of the properties they inherited. The area was attached to the city as weekend garden plots in the 1970s and the old folk now dying bought these plots back then.

Since then the place grew, they brought water, electricity, public street lighting, gas and paved roads to the township and now there are plans to bring sewage pipes and declare the area as part of the city and not just a township outside the city limits. So a lot of potential for investment. Already a large number of young couples are moving out building brand new large houses, dwarfing my little tiny baby…

Anyway, all this means the value of the property will go up. Worth checking if you are planning to buy. I went to the council, asked the public works department what plans they had and it turned out they are going to build a main street with a bus stop to help young parents take their kids to school.

Then, I also heard they are planning to build a business centre two miles down the road, the railway station is also only one or two miles away and there is the motorway just round the corner connecting to another motorway to the capital city Budapest, another to Serbia and another to Romania. So the whole area is really well connected, there will be business investment hopefully soon, so I am hoping to bring in some extra cash when I sell up, if I sell up one day.

When I arrived in the city three weeks ago I went around the township and started calling people straight away. I arranged several viewings for the next two days and chose three which I really liked. I asked the owners to meet again to haggle a bit but two of them did not want to lower the price, so I went with the third one who gave me a nice 15% discount. The neighbours were good, it is a nice secluded area far from the main road, quiet at night and I can’t even hear the dogs barking so it’s great!

It has a cellar, one room, another room that will be the kitchen and a smaller one which I will turn into the bathroom, a large terrace and a void which can be turned into another room. The garden has many trees, the soil is sand so it is easy to look after and it has all I need.

The back of the house