Best Of

@TOPPING (fpt)

"Let me help. Most of them - units dealing with elderly patients - are fucking useless. Because actually, they don't really care whether the elderly patient survives or not. Not really. Of course there are individuals who are great in the NHS but institutionally perhaps because there is precious little accountability (and then only when something "obvious" has gone wrong), it doesn't matter if your 85-yr old aunt lives or dies. Or is neglected. Or isn't fed properly. Or whose bed isn't changed regularly. Or who is or isn't given the correct medication.

I challenge everyone on PB to ask 10 friends about treatment an elderly relative has received at the hands of the NHS and a significant proportion of them will have shocking stories. But of course the ones that have received great care (and of course plenty do) will write letters, call phone-in programmes and bang saucepans to say how marvellous the NHS is."

And into this system the government proposes to introduce an AD law which will create an obvious, glaring and gigantic conflict of interest and multiple opportunities (pressures even) for its staff to "suggest" or "coerce" (because who will find out - all effective external scrutiny having been removed) such people into suicide to save money for the NHS. For those who think I am exaggerating listen to the answers Stephen Kinnock, the Palliative Care Minister, has been giving to the House of Lords Committee this week. As well as lying about what the Equality Impact Assessment said, his answers are utterly chilling in their lack of humanity for precisely the people @TOPPING is describing and, indeed, people like me with a terminal illness.

Don’t worry.

Some men will be along shortly, to mansplain that the actual things that have happened in Canada and the Netherlands can’t happen.

I could try anger. But I just smiled at the doctors who were dehydrating my father. And politely asked them to put him on a drip for the eleventh time.

"units dealing with elderly patients - are fucking useless. Because actually, they don't really care whether the elderly patient survives or not. Not really. Of course there are individuals who are great in the NHS but institutionally perhaps because there is precious little accountability (and then only when something "obvious" has gone wrong), it doesn't matter if your 85-yr old aunt lives or dies. Or is neglected. Or isn't fed properly. Or whose bed isn't changed regularly. Or who is or isn't given the correct medication."

And the end of the day though why is this up to the institution? Individual nurses deal with individual patients. If they can't be fucking arsed to hydrate them as seems to be often the case these days then they are morally responsible as human beings imho.

Not a new thing. Back a bit there was a scandal when hospital patients were found to be drinking the water from the flower vases. They made sure that wouldn't happen again by forbidding flowers in wards.

Very much the same story with the majority of the wards my father found himself on in the last decade or so of his life.
There were exceptions, but the rule was either indifference or outright neglect.

When he was hospitalised with bacteraemia for a couple of months, he simply would not have survived had we not visited him daily to ensure adequate nutrition and treatment.

Some others on the ward didn't.

My Mum in her final weeks had mostly good hospital care, but not always perfect. (My dad and first stepmother died at home, the second stepmother in a home, and all in the US.) My aunt, despite much ill health, continues on and receives excellent care as an outpatient.

My dad lived for quite a long time with dementia, and had various other health episodes, so I got a fair amount of experience.

Elderly patients who don't for whatever reason get visited by family tend also to get neglected by the staff.

That isn't always true, but regular visitors are good for patient morale as well as for keeping up care standards.

Bad care can get normalised very quickly. It is a feature of institutionalisation.

This review article looks at problems of neglect in different care systems in UK, North America, Continental Europe and Scandanavia and South Africa.

https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6963-13-156

Oh, it wasn't always true in my father's case either, but more often than not, it was.
It was the basic failure to ensure adequate nutrition and hydration that I found most disturbing.

That's an interesting report, though a bit detached in tone. I only skimmed it, but nowhere, for instance, did I see leadership and effective management discussed.

I have to admit that it's hard to argue with @Cyclefree . While I am fairly strongly in favour of the principle of assisted dying, the practical concerns she raises echo some if my own.

I am one of the many doctors sceptical to say the least about Assisted Dying. I accept that there are some staff that may abuse it, but I think pressure from avaricious relatives cannot be ignored either.

The problem of neglect and poor nursing and medical care is much wider though, and not unique to the NHS. It is probably much more prevalent in private social care, and is an issue in other healthcare systems too. Neither is it a new phenomenon. Florence Nightingale made her name by exposing poor care at Scutari hospital 170 years ago.

Often there is poor leadership at ward level, and in the same hospital there are often wards that are vastly different in the quality of care, sometimes even adjacent to each other.

That's certainly true from my experience, too.
Though the difference is that is a larger Siemens choice in social care; it's more possible to 'shop around' - though again that requires family committed to doing so.

I think people get habituated to their environment very quickly. Whether nuses, doctors, prison officers, police, lawyers, social workers, bankers or the armed forces people rapidly adapt to their conditions. That power of adaption is one of our strengths as a species and why we can live in some very hostile environments, but it has its dark side too. It is how people become heartless, cynical, callous and normalise bad behaviour.

We become products of our environment and it takes a fairly strong character to stand against the tide. I think the best defence is wide friendship groups outside that environment in order to recalibrate. In an atomised online world that gets harder each year.

The guy has lost it.

He's in a world of his own; owning the libs is irrelevant when you're in charge and failing.

Trump responds to a question about rising prices and affordability: “The reason why I don't want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump…Karoline, could you discuss that question that was asked and how it was asked in such a fake, disgusting manner by the fake news?”
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1986864594371895648

His mental decline should be the lead story, but nobody will report it

Trump has replaced Biden's portrait in the Whitehouse with a photograph of an auto-pen. With what should the next Democratic President (it might be a while) replace Trump's portrait?

Keep Trump's portrait.

As a warning from history.

Good morning

My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby

It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since

I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon

The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently

Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are

Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.

This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them

Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening

And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism

Lego just released an awesome Enterprise D model.

And it’s not a toy…😁

That’s as many pieces as Concorde and Saturn V combined.

Well GTA VI got delayed again so I don’t want a PS5 Pro for Christmas any more…

Had wondered if this was about the shuttle, or the WW2 carrier, or the nuke carrier? So I had to look it up.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/star-trek-u-s-s-enterprise-ncc-1701-d-10356

Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.

There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!

Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!

Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch

“What’s the scale of this Darling?”
“One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”

On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.

I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.

Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.

"Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? Last person I called `Darling' was pregnant twenty seconds later!"

Come back Rik Mayall…..please!!!!

I canvassed Rik Mayall not that long before he died. He was absolutely as you'd hope in that situation - no useful canvass data obtained, but a proper ten minute doorstep show full of madness and gags.

Lego just released an awesome Enterprise D model.

And it’s not a toy…😁

That’s as many pieces as Concorde and Saturn V combined.

Well GTA VI got delayed again so I don’t want a PS5 Pro for Christmas any more…

Had wondered if this was about the shuttle, or the WW2 carrier, or the nuke carrier? So I had to look it up.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/star-trek-u-s-s-enterprise-ncc-1701-d-10356

Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.

There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!

Lego dog for scale?

So, 700 cops 6 arrests. Public sector productivity hits a new low.

This is at the core of when all the political talking heads are going I have looked at the data the trend of this or that crime stat is down, why the public go WTF....everybody understands crimes happen, what they don't expect is that a) the police just go nought we can do and b) when they do actually investigate they never catch anybody for certain types of crimes.

For things like your car been nicked its now here is your crime number for the insurance and jog on. For what could be a crime of stealing £50-100k item. Its not nicking a mar bars from the corner shop.

And we had reports that alleged train stabby stabby not only allegedly went stabby stabby the previous day but allegedl slashed somebody in the face the previous week and the plod closed the case within hours. Slashed in the face and the police shrug....

It feels like whataboutery but the case of Allison Pearson's tweet she deleted:

1 A social media post by Allison Pearson in 2023 was initially reported to the Metropolitan Police as a potential breach of the Malicious Communications Act in November 2024.

2 The case was then passed to Sussex Police, who marked it as a possible non-crime hate incident (NCHI) and potential malicious communication.

3 Sussex Police passed the complaint further to Essex Police, where Allison Pearson resides.

4 Essex Police made two assessments and then opened an investigation under section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986 related to material "likely or intended to cause racial hatred."

5 Essex Police sent officers to visit Pearson's home on Remembrance Sunday 2024 to discuss the alleged incident, describing it during the visit as a "non-crime hate incident," although the force later contested that characterization.

6 Several police forces including the Metropolitan Police and Sussex Police were involved at different stages before Essex Police took primary responsibility.

7 Essex Police set up a "gold group," usually reserved for major crimes, to handle the investigation of Pearson’s social media post, which escalated the seriousness of the inquiry.

8 Essex Police made an Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) complaint against The Telegraph’s reporting of the incident.

Surely as soon as it was assessed as "non-crime" the involvement of police should stop.

Or at most, passed straight to Essex Police (where she lives) and a couple of cops gone round to offer "words of advice" ie what a traffic cop does if he thinks you are driving like a dick but haven't reached a prosecutable threshold.