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These NHS excess death figures are terrible for Sunak – politicalbetting.com
These NHS excess death figures are terrible for Sunak – politicalbetting.com
Several papers pick up the the comments by a senior health chief above the impact of delays in the NHS at the moment which could be causing 500 excess deaths per week.
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Choices. Consequences. Responsibility.
We are seeing what happens when services lack capacity. It doesn't matter if you have BUPA cover or not when you have a heart attack as private hospitals do not have emergency departments.
I do get a slightly irritated with some right-wingers who very obviously have private healthcare and who don't get it about the current situation.
I mentioned the other day to someone (Moonshine maybe) that it's no good shoring up the triple lock and their house values if they feel they won't be cared for when they're ill. This matters more than anything and it ought to have been a priority of the tories to sort it out.
Another example of Sunak being out of touch.
Apart from assessments, which were largely due to the shockingly inept and rushed reform carried out by Spielman, Cummings, Gibb and Gove.
(And you're wrong. They really can't learn adequately under those conditions. Or have you never wondered why so few poorer Africans become leading politicians, scientists etc?)
After all, a large part of the purpose of Brexit was to force payrises for working Britons by reducing foreign competition. It is a feature not a bug of Brexit.
In short the conversation goes like this:
Brexiteer: "We have to ban foreign workers so we can take care of our own."
Our own: "I need a pay rise in order to pay my bills."
Brexiteer: "F*** Off!"
(When was the last time that two of three party leaders had titles of some description? My guess would be 1902 - Lord Salisbury, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and John Redmond.)
(And it did definitely hinder them from becoming scientists well into the mid-twentieth century. Although that may have been due to the narrow curriculum of most public schools as well. There is a reason why Germany jumped so far ahead of us.)
I'm genuinely puzzled that anyone is making this argument.
As if this government is capable of planning.
The issue seems to be multi factorial. It's clear that things have been slipping since 2008 when the GFC hit. The Cameron government took a decision to impose austerity lite, and cash was somewhat restricted. This has continued. Costs have risen, more older and sicker patients and the NHS can't keep up. Brexit has impacted a bit, although it's not impossible for the UK gov to accept other nations training as suitable and let them work here without 6 months further training, so thats not really Brexit.
So a stressed system met first COVID, leading to lots of missed and delayed diagnoses, and now the attempt to recover while a huge flu epidemic rages
There are no simple solutions, but lots of things can be done. Start by agreeing a sensible pay offer with the nurses. Then start recruiting overseas again and stop playing silly buggers about mutual qualifications.
I agree that it is unnessecary red tape, but that is Brexit and exiting the Single Market for you.
Incidentally the NHS doesn't have the power to recognise qualifications, that is a statutory responsibility of the GMC. Neither does the NHS issue work visas, as that is a statutory role of the Home Office.
Private insurance works for non emergency stuff here (though many exclusions in policies) but if you have a heart attack, car accident, premature labour or suicide attempt there is only one place to go, and at present you cannot get in.
None of this is simple. There were comments about TAs yesterday. I went to a grammar school and never saw a TA. But that seems to be because the kids who need them were very much were in other settings. That's a choice that's been made but needs paying for.
Most people accept that, at least at the moment, being out of the economic arrangements of Europe is making the UK poorer than it would otherwise be.
That includes some Brexit backers; either those who think that the price is worth paying in national freedom (David Frost, for example) or those who argue for a Nike swoosh trajectory (BoJo used the phrase, it's also in JRM's "50 years to see the benefits" thing).
That does reduce the money we have as country to pay for nice things like healthcare. At least for now, possibly forever.
So we needed to throw money at building new schools - the Tories hadn't fixed the roof when the sun was shining. But then this is the British disease. We can't build stuff we need, because subsidy is communism. Hence PFI where we got brilliant facilities on bonkers contracts. Tories criticised this, then greatly sped up PFI. And now yet another Tory decade when investment has supposedly been made, a load of spivs have made a fortune but schools and hospitals are crumbling again.
Can we not do like everyone else does? When our kids need a school just build it? When we need a new hospital just build it?
But we're still paying through the nose for them.
Despite everything the NHS is a good deal though considering that, even someone on 50k only pays 7.5k income tax per year. What is a bit unfortunate and unjust though is that those who are funding the NHS by paying large amounts of tax cannot access care.
The one lasting achievement of the Truss Event was to see the end of the NHS and Social Care levy.
I happen to think there are better ways of raising the necessary money, and the levy was introduced cynically as a way to fund income tax cuts, rather than NHS spending, but nevertheless it's an interesting sign of where the NHS lies in the Tory hierarchy of needs.
There is potential for a "Crisis, what crisis?" moment.
Brexit is contributing to the current crisis, but that is only one facet of it. Major real terms pay cuts are another.
Also, expensive buildings can still be built on the cheap. That shoddy build quality is something we've done for ages.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/the-ticking-time-bomb-leaving-schools-liable-to-collapse/
Yes, they are ultimately responsible, but I think they have zero control over the civil service (eg. The Home Office), and arms length quangos (like the GMC) that have independence but have absolutely no accountability. The tail is absolutely wagging the dog.
This is not normal and is not acceptable. Neither is it unique, indeed there is a growing perception that the NHS has already collapsed in critical areas.
This crisis has been foretold in countless warnings and the Conservative government has brushed aside these warnings.
PB Tories, please explain why anyone at all should vote for the shiftless shower of shi%te that you laughingly call a government.
The NHS has had a nominal increase every single year since 2010; it was the only HMG department protected from austerity.
Some of these years the increases were 2-3% each year but that equated to "0%" in real terms, and the NHS needs an increase in real-terms, each and every year, because with an ageing population, drug price inflation, the increasing treatability of conditions, wage demands and competition for labour in the market you have to run just to stand still. What's the price? Probably of the order of 4-6% pa, depending on the year.
It doesn't take long to see how that compounds and becomes unsustainable in the long-run, particularly since it 'crowds out' spending in other HMG departments and creates an almost irresistible demand for expansion of the overall tax burden to fuel it, progressively suffocating consumption & investment in the wider economy.
So that only makes my point stronger - why can't we build schools and hospitals in this country without making such a mess of it? This isn't even party political as they've both screwed this up. Which is where I start to understand the likes of Cummings or even the SNP saying we need to radically change things.
Yes, we need the Tories out because they are incompetent and basically immoral in their approach to most things. But I have zero expectations that Labour will make any fundamental changes.
government.
And if the government has zero control over the civil service (even Jim Hacker got the occasional win), they really should give up, go home, and let someone else try.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-29202205
As critical incidents are now declared at NHS trusts nationwide…
As waiting lists, ambulance and A&E waits reach record lengths
As nurses strike or leave the profession in their thousands
Remember this staggering video by Vote Leave
See the lies then
See the truth now.
https://twitter.com/MarinaPurkiss/status/1609170533542760453/video/1
It's one of our obsessions in the UK that the EU is both the source of and the solution to all our problems, depending on your point of view.
This is what control looks like.
You seem to be implying Brexit was a total fucking waste
People were lied to, have seen the grim reality and are entitled to change their minds.
Future belongs to the young. No one under the age of 24 voted in the 2016 referendum and deserve a say.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-referendum-rejoin-eu-b2250813.html
Then you might hope that advances in medical technology, and drugs coming out of patent, would also lead to existing treatments becoming cheaper, and so we don't necessarily face a choice between an infinitely expanding NHS, or reductions in the quality of care.
Time to go and do something else, I think.
Good day, everyone.
Sure, the Government is clapped out. But taking on the civil service/quangos isn't even in the Labour Party's vocabulary, let alone on their radar.
Truss was looking at an extra 20hrs of free childcare + scrapping staff-child ratios. Due to be revealed pre Xmas
But reforms delayed + scaled back”
I genuinely don’t see why the conservatives are bothering being in power any longer. Would have been one of those sensible policies for parents locked out of work via childcare costs. A mystery why people aren’t having children..
Labour will tackle this.
We’ll train 7,500 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year, paid for by scrapping the non-dom tax status.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nhs-hospital-spent-5200-one-28706839
I don't know who is most stupid - the Tory brexiteers who have betrayed everything they stand for, or the people still clinging onto their bullshit despite all of the very evident proof that its been a disaster.
In Jan 2020, so just before Covid kicked off, Mrs Foxy was involved in a major motorway smash up while returning from the Isle of Wight, with leg and chest injuries and difficulty breathing, but was picked up and in hospital within half an hour. These things used to work.
She was on a trolley in A&E for the next 8 hours mind you, and the trolleys were end to end in the corridors, apparently always that way. The system was clearly at stretched capacity though, so didn't need much additional demand to overflow into the ambulance bay.
The Walsgrave did a great job on her that night, and apart from one knee she is fine now. Incidentally modern cars are so much better in a major pile up than the bangers I used to drive. You only need an airbag once. Esure were great too, paying up promptly, and more than I expected, and very helpful on the claims desk.
But control means choice. The responsible organisation has the choice to recognise qualifications that yesterday it was airily waving through, or not to. If a 6 month checking process is necessary now, it is dereliction of duty that it did not happen then. If it isn't necessary, why is it happening now? You can't answer other than in meaningless slogans.
Only yesterday we were calmly assured on here that this incident was absolutely the fault of the last Labour Government. So you can blame them. Its that poor Steven Barclay I feel sorry for, he is the victim here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-points-based-immigration-system-employer-information/becoming-a-sponsor-of-skilled-migrant-workers-accessible-version
"Apply - allow 8 weeks
Apply online and pay the fee
The fee is dependent on the type of licence(s) you are applying for and the type and size of your organisation. It will either be £536 or £1,476
Send your supporting documents to UKVI
Confirm how many staff you plan to recruit through the sponsorship system for the current financial year
Each staff member sponsored costs £21 or £199, in addition to the usual visa application fees
If successful, your licence will be valid for 4 years."
Note, this is what HMG insists you need to do. Since Brexit.
Firstly: why these numbers? Who settled on these suspiciously round numbers as the right level for a target? Are these numbers based on clinical need or cost? What treatment fields are the priority? Are there enough positions in training facilities and universities to train this number? If not, how do you propose to address this?
How much is the non-dom tax leak? What are the sources for this number? What is the NAO and HMRC view? What are the tax losses for scrapping the non-dom status for overseas citizens? Is there even a net gain to the exchequer from doing this?
Glib slogans backed by thin cheer pieces from a biased media is the kind of garbage that got us into the Tory mess.
Why would it be different from Labour?
Our problems are not just with the particular party of government. Though the current bunch truly, truly are bad, we seem to have a problem with our whole system. This is a crisis 40 years in the making.
https://migration.bristol.ac.uk/2021/08/03/the-uk-philippine-trade-in-nurses-is-it-ever-ethical/
Membership mandated recognition.
Now we are not members.
If the Brexiteers want mandated recognition, they need to legislate for it.
This is a Brexit fuck up. Even you know it, but aren't ready to admit it.
That knows these problems are happening, knows why they are happening...
That could get the Home and Health secretaries go on the news tonight and say "We are directing the Home Office to recognise European medical qualifications as of next week"...
Just cowers in the face of the Home Office and GMC?
As they say in Essex, you are having a bubble. The simplest explanation is that this is happening because the government wants this bit of it (fewer Europeans coming here doing our jobs) to happen and is prepared to overlook the consequences.