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Without the NHS improving Sunak’s government looks doomed – politicalbetting.com
Without the NHS improving Sunak’s government looks doomed – politicalbetting.com
Yesterday I took a very big decision and booked an appointment with a private surgeon for my spine. This is going to cost me but I had a procedure on the NHS two months ago which does not seem to have done the trick and now and now I can barely walk.
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Plenty more people will believe it now, because the number of stories like OGH's is through the roof.
Probably a leaky roof too because we also cannot build anything anymore.
Perhaps only silver-ish lining, is that you and Old King Cole can form a club.
Why? Because THE hot button issue for hordes of perturbed PBers, namely the Trans Threat and related War on Woke, are . . . wait for it . . . NOWHERE in the alleged responses.
HOW CAN THIS BE?!?!?!
My only spinal injury was a bruised tailbone ten years ago, and frankly that was bad enough, as minor as it was.
Samuel Kasumu backed by series of senior Conservatives as he vows to take on Sadiq Khan and his Ulez expansion
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/24/boris-johnson-adviser-samuel-kasumu-london-mayor/ (£££)
Kasumu is said to have been backed by Priti Patel, Grant Shapps and Steve Baker. This reads like a puff piece and if Kasumu is frontrunner, he might be the only runner. He is not quoted in the betting.
“I know what a woman is, and I will protect Woman’s rights and woman’s spaces.”
Clear subtext to this - if you vote Starmer you will get a penis where you don’t want it, and where it has no right to be. Just look at how many women the polling telling us are currently undecided who to vote for. And why is that do you think?
Wait. Is the NHS backlog only 7M now, wasn’t it 12M not so long ago under Boris? The Tories have done amazing job just about halving it so quickly. 🫡 salute that.
PS the health Secretary will beat the nurses in court and get the May 2nd strike called illegal - he’s got the facts on his side and the nurses leadership over a barrel.
Personally would prefer Michael Frabricant's hair-dresser (or wig-monger) to a BJ advisor ANY day.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/survey-results/daily/2023/03/28/37b24/1
● A skill exceptionally rare among political leaders to communicate with charisma and humour with the public far and wide, to read the mood and currents of politics, and to raise people’s sights about what could be achieved.
● An all-consuming self-centredness that impelled him to be the most important and visible person on every occasion, with the minimum effort required, and to be impatient of any person, precedent or procedure getting in the way of that quest. “I want it all and I want it now” was an impulse he found difficult to overcome.
● A lack of moral seriousness not mitigated by his intellect and rhetorical skills. Causes, commitments, colleagues as well as pledges, policies and partners were regarded as transitory and transactional. Any could be picked up only to be jettisoned when they no longer served his interests or pleasure.
These added up to three flaws that, unaddressed, would prove fatal: an inability to value truth and to set or pronounce on moral boundaries; to recognise merit, appoint the best people and trust them to do their jobs; and to stick by any decision or person without changing his mind.
It was about 2.5 million in 2010 and 3.25 million at the end of the Coalition, and 4.5 million when Johnson took office, before covid hit. Covid obviously made it worse, but it was substantially up even before then.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/nhs-backlog-data-analysis
If the strike is made illegal on 2 May, so has to finish on May 1, do you think the problem of industrial relations in the NHS just goes away?
Spot on
Well done for this thread which drives home a critical issue for many older folk. The NHS is in a dreadful state and it's no good the tories blaming others after 12 years in charge.
The grey vote is often assumed to be in their pocket because of the pension triple lock but it's no good having that security if one of your other most basic Maslow needs is so precarious.
The NHS really matters.
Healthcare failing is not just a British problem though, many other countries, across the whole spectrum of organisational systems, have issues with backlogs built up during the pandemic. Canada is a lot worse, as is the US.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/health-care-wait-times-by-country
Get well soon OGH.
A sensible debate on the topic would be good in a less febrile atmosphere, which may mean 'never' but which will probably come a few years into a Labour Gov't. Eventually the country will settle down to a reasonable position which protects vulnerable cis women and at the same recognises gender transition.
Meanwhile I suspect there will be one single day during the election campaign when a lot of people get in a lather, and then, after 36 hours, the debate will move on to topics which really matter to most people - as in the graph above. Why? Because by and large most people don't give a flying fuck about whether someone wants to call themselves a man, woman, kathoey, or anything else or whether they do or don't have penises, vaginas, clitorises, uteruses, breasts, prosthetic legs, glass eyes, or a bent septum.
Yes, there will still be transphobes just as there are still homophobes.
More interesting to me is the decline in circulation of the dead tree press. This table doesn't paste well but the first figure is 2023 then through to 2020 on the right.
Metro 953,475 1,027,989 597,979 1,426,535
Daily Mail 797,704 909,201 960,019 1,169,241
Evening Standard 314,285 446,257 489,405 798,168
Daily Mirror 277,550 333,731 366,501 451,466
Daily Express 176,264 221,214 238,230 296,079
Daily Star 157,612 195,545 220,126 277,237
i 134,277 142,598 141,115 217,182
Financial Times 114,685 113,817 97,067 157,982
City A.M. 67,090 76,465 N/A 85,521
Daily Record 61,883 75,696 85,769 104,343
The Guardian N/A N/A 108,687 132,341
The Sun N/A N/A N/A 1,250,634
The Times N/A N/A N/A 368,929
The Daily Telegraph N/A N/A N/A 360,345
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation
Do these newspapers really have much influence anymore? Have we now left behind the days of 'IT'S THE SUN WOT WON IT'?
Clearly the Mail has a particularly powerful online presence but that seems to be mainly in their celeb gossip rather than mainstream news.
But I wouldn't expect a rich expat living in Dubai to be on that wavelength. Or indeed the wavelength of many people in this country.
When was the last time someone said it and meant it? My guess is 1948.
Optimism there is not any.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-rank-rating-world-top-first-b1897008.html
Funnily enough, people with different experiences come to different conclusions. People who have experienced other healthcare systems, often prefer them.
Oh, and not particularly rich either. I live in a modest 2-bed apartment, and drive a 16-year-old car.
People who have lived in other developed countries know that it doesn't have to be this bad. People who have only lived in Britain think that the alternative to the NHS is what they have in the US, which is terrible for equal and opposite reasons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65373191.amp
I would recommend reading this by Marmot, which explains a lot of why the NHS performance has worsened over the last 13 years.
"Health spending per person, adjusted for demographic change, grew at 2% a year under the Conservatives from 1979 to 1997; at 5.7% a year under Labour from 1997 to 2010; at -0.07% from 2010 to 2015; and at -0.03% from 2015 to 2021. (snip) Other European countries have taken a different approach. If the UK had increased its healthcare expenditure from 2010 to 2019 as much as France did, we would have increased our current spend by 21%, and by 39% if we had matched Germany."
I am not saying that we either could or should have matched peer countries in their health spending, but not doing so does have consequences.
Rishi Sunak may have wrongly disclosed details of active inquiry
Watchdog broadens investigation into PM’s failure to disclose wife’s shares
Parliament’s ethics watchdog has widened its investigation into whether Rishi Sunak broke rules on declaring a financial interest.
The prime minister is now also being investigated over whether he wrongly disclosed details of the active inquiry, which is looking into claims that he should have told MPs his wife might benefit from childcare subsidies announced in the budget.
Akshata Murty is a shareholder in Koru Kids, a childcare agency that is likely to benefit from more generous support for the sector. Sunak did not mention his wife’s shares when questioned about the policy by the Commons liaison committee last month.
Sunak later wrote to the committee to insist that the shareholding had been “rightly declared to the Cabinet Office” under rules which allow some of ministers’ declarations to stay private.
Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, began an inquiry last week and it has now emerged that he has broadened the scope to include potential breaches of rules against disclosing details of active inquiries.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-wife-parliamentary-standards-commissioner-fxx0vvp3h
Marie Curie, the charity for those with terminal illness, threatened to take a volunteer to court if he spoke to the press about its handling of bullying allegations.
Philip Stogdon, a charity shop volunteer for 12 years, was dismissed and told the charity could take “legal remedies”.
Senior executives at Marie Curie, which has an annual income of £165 million, instructed a City law firm to issue legal threats to Stogdon, 71, after he repeatedly complained that he had been unfairly sacked for complaining about the treatment of a colleague.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/marie-curie-charity-volunteer-bullying-complaint-2023-s0bdjmk5g
The UK is permanently losing thousands of doctors overseas each year, analysis of official figures suggests.
More than half of doctors who have left the UK medical register told an official survey by the General Medical Council that they were both unlikely and unwilling to return.
Separate figures from the doctors’ regulator show that 4,843 individuals moved abroad to practise medicine last year.
Doctors have reported overseas recruiters from countries such as New Zealand, Canada and Australia capitalising on NHS industrial disputes to fill gaps in their own workforce.
While the UK medical workforce is growing, it is itself heavily reliant on overseas medical recruitment, with almost a third of UK doctors foreign-trained.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-doctors-tempted-overseas-unlikely-and-unwilling-to-return-8k79k3qm5
Indians made up the second largest cohort of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats in the first three months of the year, new figures have revealed.
In the period to the end of March, 675 Indian migrants arrived in small boats, or 18 per cent of the total 3,793 crossings in the first quarter of 2023.
Afghans were the most common migrants, with 909, accounting for 24 per cent of arrivals.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-doctors-tempted-overseas-unlikely-and-unwilling-to-return-8k79k3qm5
When are you "waiting"? When you have an appointment in 4 weeks? Is that "waiting"? My son has an appointment in 10 weeks to see a consultant. It is fixed for then because he will be back from University again. Is he one of the 7m?
I find this figure almost impossible to believe. I would love to know more about how it is calculated.
That all said, it is clear that the NHS is not delivering as it should for the money spent on it. Healthcare is being privatised by the back door because so many people take the same decision as Mike has done: they are not prepared to wait in pain and have lost confidence in the service provided. When I was young only the really rich went private. Now it seems to be a slightly predictable expense of later middle age.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e26f669c-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/e26f669c-en#:~:text=Based on the initial data,of GDP allocated to health.
Is it that we face much worse than average demographic issues?
The chancellor has blamed the "eye-watering sums" spent on helping people through the coronavirus pandemic and energy crisis for an increase in public sector borrowing.
Public sector net borrowing was £21.5bn last month - the second-highest March borrowing since monthly records began in 1993.
The Office for National Statistics said that the government received 2% more in taxes and other income last month than in March last year.
But over the same period, spending increased by 16.8% to £104bn, in part due to the cost of the energy support schemes for households and businesses.
https://news.sky.com/story/energy-bills-support-drives-uk-public-borrowing-to-second-highest-march-level-12865779
Always plant my humble tomatoes and bedding plants out on the last bank holiday in May.
There is scope to game the figures, for example ticking the box as treatment commenced when starting physio, rather than joint surgery. There is too the problem of crystallisation in that a patient waiting a year for an appointment and then the decision to operate immediately becomes a 1 year breech of the RTT target.
The RTT time only applies to new appointments and treatments too, which is why they get priority over follow ups and further treatments. Figures on follow up backlogs are even more nebulous, but probably equal those waiting for new appointments.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/24/labour-to-use-tactic-that-finished-off-truss-to-force-tories-into-sewage-vote
Well, you have to say it has a mileage as a slogan...
Well. They are on the sick during a labour shortage. Or simply suffering.
Normally I would have the heating off by now.
Not using our tidal resource is like discovering North Sea oil - and leaving it under the sea bed.
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1650452381216174081?s=20
Turd time lucky?
And since a very high proportion will never pay back their debts anyway, through emigrating, it wouldn't even cost that much.
In their great wisdom the Treasury has determined that this should come out of *current* expenditure (because of the limits on capex).
We are basically paying for the Blair government’s expansion of healthcare today
Would a telemedicine screen followed by a request to pop into the GP surgery trigger it?
I blame governments for not taking hard choices. Labour spent oodles of future health money with PPI - cunningly keeping it off the current spend. We are still paying now.
The Tories, rightly or wrongly decided that austerity-lite* was needed in 2010. This is not the time or place to say who was right or wrong, but the consequences are now becoming clear in the waiting lists.
But.
If we had increased spend by equivalent to say France or Germany, what would the bill have been? And almost every voter who says when polled ‘I’d pay more tax for the NHS’ then forgets that in the privacy of the polling booth.
We need to grow up as a nation and realise that you get what you pay for.
I’d turn NI into part of income tax, and replace it with mandatory health insurance, with support for the low paid, those unable to work. The NHS would still be free at the point of use, but the insurance money would get spent. If you went over drawn, not matter, your account just goes into the red. No change on what you pay, but you get to see where you stand with the cost of the care you have had.
Me, I’d be heavily into the red, and I’m grateful.
Frankly I find a lot of higher paid charity work to be galling, as all those donations contribute to the salary. The best charities have few overheads.
A telephone call with a Consultant would, if referred by a GP, though would depend on whether the "Treatment Commenced" box is ticked.
Everything else has been cut to the bone - through the bone - to protect the old folk subsidy at all costs. The triple lock has to go and the state pension age has to rise - while protecting the genuinely vulnerable. The false economies of the Osborne era are coming home to roost; schools and a&e departments are becoming carers of first resort.
For all of the low quality of Bozzer, the Trussterfuck et al, the real villains of our time are Cameron and Osborne.
Fundamentally health insurance is insurance against a catastrophic risk. The insurance company charges 12 people £100 and then pays £1000 in medical expenses for 1 person. If they are right they make a nice profit and the risk has been pooled. If they are wrong then they lose money and the risk has been pooled.
Unless insurance results in lower costs in the healthcare system (which is possible) then it means the amount that people will pay goes up.
We've had fifty years or so where the boomer generation has been in employment and supporting a relatively small pensioner cohort. There has been a fiscal crunch coming that was visible from space.
Despite that, voters have rewarded politicians who have cut taxes now, rather than doing anything to build up resilience for the squeeze which is now arriving bang on time.
I wouldn't mind so much if I could point to what the tax cuts have gained us apart from house price inflation.
Unfortunately I’m off to gloomy old London for work shortly - BUT, I will be treating myself later to a screening of the restored 70mm print of 2001 at the Prince Charles cinema. I’ve never seen it at the pictures before.
I stick to my line that nothing is more important than health and we should invest more in it, in the people who deliver health services, in the infrastructure, in health education, in nudging people towards healthier lifestyles.
How's that going to be paid for? Taxes. But as I said 'nothing is more important than health'.
Law Ten – If something has to be claimed as declared “world-beating” it almost certainly isn’t.
It is slightly built in to peoples' minds. What will really matter is inflation, the cost of living, and the pound in peoples' pockets.
Of course they respond "the NHS" to surveys but what will count is the economy, stupid.
Either way, the Netherlands seems to be generally rated as a better health service than the UK (also better than eg Germany which seems to spend more), so maybe there are few things to learn.
It is the correct thing to do but none will, certainly not labour, but the issue is not going away and whoever is in no 10 will become terrible unpopular as it becomes unavoidable
We had no fogs in March this year so May will definitely* be frost-free.
(*DYOR)
The real problem is not the state pension but earnings related pensions from employment in the public sector. These are a massive drain on our tax take. In certain narrow areas, such as the fire service, providing the pensions for retired staff costs more than the current service. Unlike the State pension which is now only generally available at 67, these public sector pensions often start at 60 and are then in payment for even longer.
https://amac.us/what-if-biden-cant-finish-the-race/
None of them seem entirely implausible but I would imagine, when it comes to the betting rules, there would be some implications.
Gosh this game is difficult.
Cheer up!
@StigAbell on Times Radio: “Inflation isn’t halving. The NHS isn’t fixed. You’re not stopping the boats… can you confidently say that Brexit isn’t affecting our ability to recover?”
Trade minister @kevinhollinrake: “Don’t be so pessimistic Stig.”
Any further increases in pension age will happen very gradually.