It seems to be death watch beetle party night tonight here in France. They’ve all woken from their slumber at the same time and I can hear at least 4 separate mating tapping patterns all around the house. In fact another one’s just started so make that 5. It’s like they’re all up for an orgy/rave tonight.
Creepy and unnerving, when you know the damage they’re doing to the beams.
Hah! We used to have that in the place we had in France.
Mind you, them beams take a lot of punishment. Also, I suspect a lot of noise is made by just a few beetles.
Put it this way, if they'sd been chomping away for centuries the way they sounded as if they were chomping, our roof would have been a pile of sawdust.
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
20% not working is too much. Productivity is too low. We need to find ways of the majority doing better; earning more; having a better life, etc etc.
Significantly higher wages would help. Significantly higher ability levels in management would help even more. Significantly more training, and not just ticking a box on a computer type training, would also help.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
20% not working is too much. Productivity is too low. We need to find ways of the majority doing better; earning more; having a better life, etc etc.
As a start, start getting rid of cliff edges in the benefits system. Which make people *afraid* of work.
To go from inactive to active, you are probably going to start out with a low paid, part time job. At the moment we have benefit withdrawals making working extra hours pointless - and the risk of being fined if something is done slightly wrong.
If someone goes from 16 to 40 hours of work, we should be giving them a boost. Not an 80% tax rate.
Crudely, the argument for not means-testing benefits. Or at least, being very gentle in how you do it.
Well, that and the admin cost.
I would be in favour of scheme to double benefits for someone who goes from inactive to active. Or moves up from part time to full time.
Yes, problems with people playing the system.
But that’s my idea - a fucking big bonus for success.
Instead, the UK system is the opposite, with benefit drop off plus taxes often meaning the highest marginal tax rates are on the poorest.
I'm reminded of the definition of Puritanism as The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.
We can never perfectly calibrate a benefits system. If we bias the system against giving people too much, or giving money to too many, that can have bad effects that I don't think we consider enough.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
Be fair he never mentions cash its always others
First time I have brought it up for months to be fair, mostly it is other PBers weirdly obsessively bringing it up apropos of nothing.
This time I used it as a mere example in the context of the pisspoor systems maintained by the NHS, which is valid, whatever you and the weirdly obsessed @Taz think of it!!
C
A
S
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Spam Trap Warning! Spam Trap Warning!
Get it right
Get it right, Leia said it FIRST, not once, but TWICE:
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
It seems to be death watch beetle party night tonight here in France. They’ve all woken from their slumber at the same time and I can hear at least 4 separate mating tapping patterns all around the house. In fact another one’s just started so make that 5. It’s like they’re all up for an orgy/rave tonight.
Creepy and unnerving, when you know the damage they’re doing to the beams.
You need a poisonous chemicals in the attic party tomorrow. Invite all the death watch beetles.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
I would imagine (really - no clue) that a broad blood-test at 40 could also work wonders. A lot of people start thinking 'oh, I'm getting older" at that point so even a bit of 'yeah, cut down on the pizza' could be quite helpful.
I guess as with most things NHS 'prevention' related it's a capacity problem. Possibly one of the area (at fear of summoning Leon) that AI/ML stuff might help with if it passes all the regulatory/professional hurdles. Which I imagine might take a decade or two - probably only a few hundred thousand extra deaths though. So... that's ok.
It's very variable. I have a minor (I hope) skin issue on my forehead and reported it to my Godalming GP. She immediately took a photo and asked me to text another photo in 2 weeks. When I did (after a text from her that morning reminding me to do so), she said it was a bit worse, so she was referring me to dermatology at the local hospital. Within an hour, they in turn text offering an appointment in 10 days. Frankly, no complaints at all.
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
We've discussed this before, and I think there is a certain element of confusing cause and effect.
I think when people can't afford housing, politicians think they can solve the issue by raising wages by dictat. Which, of course, doesn't work. Because the fundamental issue is a lack of affordable housing.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
It seems to be death watch beetle party night tonight here in France. They’ve all woken from their slumber at the same time and I can hear at least 4 separate mating tapping patterns all around the house. In fact another one’s just started so make that 5. It’s like they’re all up for an orgy/rave tonight.
Creepy and unnerving, when you know the damage they’re doing to the beams.
You need a poisonous chemicals in the attic party tomorrow. Invite all the death watch beetles.
I quite like the approach that apparently exists of fitting a heated blanket around beams then heating them to 300C with no flame and sizzling the little critters. Trouble is most of ours are actually in the upstairs floorboards. Plan is to rip out the visibly infected ones and replace them.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
As against that my GP practice, having been quite awful in the past, have moved to online booking and it actually works very well.
The only snag is, when they asked me in for a blood test a week ago none of the appointments they could offer were at times I could make. But they will presumably send the message again next month by which time things will likely have quietened down somewhat.
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
20% not working is too much. Productivity is too low. We need to find ways of the majority doing better; earning more; having a better life, etc etc.
As a start, start getting rid of cliff edges in the benefits system. Which make people *afraid* of work.
To go from inactive to active, you are probably going to start out with a low paid, part time job. At the moment we have benefit withdrawals making working extra hours pointless - and the risk of being fined if something is done slightly wrong.
If someone goes from 16 to 40 hours of work, we should be giving them a boost. Not an 80% tax rate.
Crudely, the argument for not means-testing benefits. Or at least, being very gentle in how you do it.
Well, that and the admin cost.
I would be in favour of scheme to double benefits for someone who goes from inactive to active. Or moves up from part time to full time.
Yes, problems with people playing the system.
But that’s my idea - a fucking big bonus for success.
Instead, the UK system is the opposite, with benefit drop off plus taxes often meaning the highest marginal tax rates are on the poorest.
I'm reminded of the definition of Puritanism as The Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy.
We can never perfectly calibrate a benefits system. If we bias the system against giving people too much, or giving money to too many, that can have bad effects that I don't think we consider enough.
You can see a UBI would attract some. Make the UBI enough to live on, but it’s a shit life and it’s job done. Everyone gets the same. If you want more you get a job. I have no idea how many currently choose a life on benefits - anecdotes are not evidence. But if everyone got a UBI then that fox is shot.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
I use ventolin on occasions but it is on repeat prescription and I order it as necessary and have no problem with it
I do have an annual COPD and asthma review and the medication is decided by the ANP and amended or left as previously depending on my review
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
It seems Ukraine were not responsible (at least, the Russians haven't blamed Ukraine yet...). But this, along with the dam collapse and other incidents, seems to point to the Russians having problems with their infrastructure not directly caused by the war.
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
WERE you by any chance, Ron Chandler's campaign manager back in 1992, when he (in)famously quoted from yet another Roger Miller classic? Thus helping launch the national political career (still ongoing) of US Senator Patty Murray.
SSI - Worth noting that in 2020, the former GOP Congressman
. . . endorsed Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 United States presidential election, wanting to prevent the re-election of President Donald Trump.
Chandler was one of 12 former Republican U.S. Representatives who filed an amicus brief in Trump v. Anderson, supporting the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to disqualify former President Donald Trump as a candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election.
@Heathener Nigel Farage today said he'd prefer a massive Labour majority so he's in effect saying he supports Labour now.
Hardly.
The ideal result for Farage would be the Conservatives in second place but with say 70-100 MPs. The gutted rump would then turn to him for salvation leading to a merger between Conservative and Reform in 2025 or 2026.
I know the eclipse fascinates many and it is one of nature's wonders that occurs from time to time
Not sure why Sky have devoted a three hour 'live' programme on it passing over the US and Canada though
It’s ok, Big_G, there’s nothing else going on in the world to report on… As ever news moves in cycles. Even Gaza seems to be slipping down the priority list on the news.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
I know the eclipse fascinates many and it is one of nature's wonders that occurs from time to time
Not sure why Sky have devoted a three hour 'live' programme on it passing over the US and Canada though
It’s ok, Big_G, there’s nothing else going on in the world to report on… As ever news moves in cycles. Even Gaza seems to be slipping down the priority list on the news.
Hamas rejecting the ceasefire proposals this evening can wait
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
Be fair he never mentions cash its always others
First time I have brought it up for months to be fair, mostly it is other PBers weirdly obsessively bringing it up apropos of nothing.
This time I used it as a mere example in the context of the pisspoor systems maintained by the NHS, which is valid, whatever you and the weirdly obsessed @Taz think of it!!
C
A
S
H
Spam Trap Warning! Spam Trap Warning!
Get it right
Get it right, Leia said it FIRST, not once, but TWICE:
Is the width of the total eclipse band across the Earth a decent measure of the diameter of the moon?
Not directly, no.
Isn't it? A quick check confirms that the ratio of sun to earth/moon to earth distances is about 400:1 so the projected shadow is not far off at all. Obviously the sun is not a point source, though, so it's sort of fuzzy at the sides, quite apart from the corona.
That's why I said total eclipse band. I think it is a decent measure, pace BenPointer, and further it shows me how small the moon is compared to Earth.
Er' you did say "width of the band", not the length or area. Which for a moving circular projection from a spherical object, is going to be much the same as the diameter of the moon.
rcs1000 - What McArdle said is that "increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness". Ordinarily causes come before effects.
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
Oh, I suspect there are multiple arrows of causality here.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
Be fair he never mentions cash its always others
First time I have brought it up for months to be fair, mostly it is other PBers weirdly obsessively bringing it up apropos of nothing.
This time I used it as a mere example in the context of the pisspoor systems maintained by the NHS, which is valid, whatever you and the weirdly obsessed @Taz think of it!!
C
A
S
H
Spam Trap Warning! Spam Trap Warning!
Get it right
Get it right, Leia said it FIRST, not once, but TWICE:
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Pharmacists can substitutes unless the doctor instructs otherwise
GPs fine - buy their businesses and you can tell them what to do
Car parks… you really have this thing about cash don’t you? But that’s exactly wrong with the NHS! A Cabinet Minister shouldn’t be spending *any* time on what machine is in a car park in Nuneaton
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
Be fair he never mentions cash its always others
First time I have brought it up for months to be fair, mostly it is other PBers weirdly obsessively bringing it up apropos of nothing.
This time I used it as a mere example in the context of the pisspoor systems maintained by the NHS, which is valid, whatever you and the weirdly obsessed @Taz think of it!!
C
A
S
H
Spam Trap Warning! Spam Trap Warning!
Get it right
Get it right, Leia said it FIRST, not once, but TWICE:
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
I visited one in Leicestershire of all places the other day to see an elderly relative who had been transferred there. The car park only took coinage, no cards, no notes, no app, nothing. It was an utter embarrassment. Thankfully I could park instantly via the JustPark app 50 yards around the corner, although the antiquated shite meters deprived the NHS of cash.
But a minor issue compared to the moronic Call Exactly At 8am Or Get Fucked GP booking system. The whole admin of the service is a national embarrassment.
The call at 8 AM policy is a result of the government's targets. As patients have to be able to get appointments promptly, that means that slots are only released on the day.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
SSI2 - I left Washington state in 1961, and didn't come back for many years, so I missed the Rod Chandler/Patty Murray campaign.
(I like "King of the Road" more than the other song. And prefer the 4th Brandenburg to either. Over the years, when I was still driving, I found it a wonderful relaxer when the traffic made me start getting tense.)
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
I visited one in Leicestershire of all places the other day to see an elderly relative who had been transferred there. The car park only took coinage, no cards, no notes, no app, nothing. It was an utter embarrassment. Thankfully I could park instantly via the JustPark app 50 yards around the corner, although the antiquated shite meters deprived the NHS of cash.
But a minor issue compared to the moronic Call Exactly At 8am Or Get Fucked GP booking system. The whole admin of the service is a national embarrassment.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
rcs1000 - What McArdle said is that "increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness". Ordinarily causes come before effects.
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
Oh, I suspect there are multiple arrows of causality here.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
I don't understand this argument. If a job requires little or no skill to do it but still needs to be done then whether it pays minimum wage or not you still need to hire someone to do it.
Minimum wages have become necessary because employers are using the fact of the existence of taxpayers support for workers as an excuse to pay below living wage. They are asking the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill and therefore their business.
So if you don't want businesses leaching the taxpayer the answer is really one of two options. Either stop paying social support to the employed and see people suffer as a result, or have a minimum wage which forces employers to pay a reasonable amount for the work they want done.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
You may know the answer to this question, but as most are aware I have had some serious health issues since October with many hospital visits and each time the doctor or consultant asks if it is OK to check my surgery's medication for me
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
I visited one in Leicestershire of all places the other day to see an elderly relative who had been transferred there. The car park only took coinage, no cards, no notes, no app, nothing. It was an utter embarrassment. Thankfully I could park instantly via the JustPark app 50 yards around the corner, although the antiquated shite meters deprived the NHS of cash.
But a minor issue compared to the moronic Call Exactly At 8am Or Get Fucked GP booking system. The whole admin of the service is a national embarrassment.
Parking Apps.
The work of Satan.
I now have two on my phone and both work well. But why are there two? Because I live in Wiltshire but only 5 miles from Frome in Somerset and the two councils use… yep a different parking app provider…
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
Which is fine by me. I get to see the results without having to make an appointment etc. If there was anything wrong they contact (as happened with a sputum isolate of a bacteria that was resistant to the current antibiotics I was on).
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
You may know the answer to this question, but as most are aware I have had some serious health issues since October with many hospital visits and each time the doctor or consultant asks if it is OK to check my surgery's medication for me
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
It's good practice to check with the patient, as what they are taking doesn't always match GP records.
Not all practices allow hospital access to their prescription records too.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
You may know the answer to this question, but as most are aware I have had some serious health issues since October with many hospital visits and each time the doctor or consultant asks if it is OK to check my surgery's medication for me
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
It's good practice to check with the patient, as what they are taking doesn't always match GP records.
Not all practices allow hospital access to their prescription records too.
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
20% not working is too much. Productivity is too low. We need to find ways of the majority doing better; earning more; having a better life, etc etc.
As a start, start getting rid of cliff edges in the benefits system. Which make people *afraid* of work.
To go from inactive to active, you are probably going to start out with a low paid, part time job. At the moment we have benefit withdrawals making working extra hours pointless - and the risk of being fined if something is done slightly wrong.
If someone goes from 16 to 40 hours of work, we should be giving them a boost. Not an 80% tax rate.
Crudely, the argument for not means-testing benefits. Or at least, being very gentle in how you do it.
Well, that and the admin cost.
I would be in favour of scheme to double benefits for someone who goes from inactive to active. Or moves up from part time to full time.
Yes, problems with people playing the system.
But that’s my idea - a fucking big bonus for success.
Instead, the UK system is the opposite, with benefit drop off plus taxes often meaning the highest marginal tax rates are on the poorest.
Those carers we were discussing - their marginal ratge is about 8090%. Yes, that much - not a typo for 80-90.
Legal question - Seeing has how Nigel Farage has (reportedly) publicly accused me, along with millions of other Americans, of casting "corrupt" postal votes, can I sue him for defamation in an English court?
Would give TSE chance to finally earn the (un)massive retainer yours truly (mis)remembers (not) paying him!
You could report him for hate crimes to the Scottish police. I think they might be a bit snowed under with reports, but as its Farage, perhaps they'll put it in the expedited pile.
rcs1000 - What McArdle said is that "increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness". Ordinarily causes come before effects.
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
Oh, I suspect there are multiple arrows of causality here.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
I don't understand this argument. If a job requires little or no skill to do it but still needs to be done then whether it pays minimum wage or not you still need to hire someone to do it.
Minimum wages have become necessary because employers are using the fact of the existence of taxpayers support for workers as an excuse to pay below living wage. They are asking the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill and therefore their business.
So if you don't want businesses leaching the taxpayer the answer is really one of two options. Either stop paying social support to the employed and see people suffer as a result, or have a minimum wage which forces employers to pay a reasonable amount for the work they want done.
I know which one I support.
I think you are taking a bit of an absolutist approach here.
There are plenty of people who - for one reason or another - have relatively low economic output. If Joe can only produce $10 of widgets an hour, and hiring Joe costs me $16, I'm not going to hire him. On the other hand, if I can pay Joe $8 an hour, then we both win.
Now, you can say that I'm exploiting Joe, but Joe's skills (and wage he can command) are more likely to grow if he's in work, and he's learning.
If he's not working, he's costing the state money in income support / JSA. He's also massively more likely to have mental health issues. And every day he's unemployed makes it less likely someone will employ him.
My preferred scenario is to have universal income, no minimum wage and a straight 25% for (say) the first $30,000 on top of the universal income. In that way, you avoid cliff edges, and ridiculously high marginal rates on the low paid, etc.
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
Someone is unable to have a child for whatever reason. So someone helps. And a child desperately wanted comes into the world surrounded by love.
Who the hell can have a problem with this?
Raises his hand
Not for religous reasons however. You can't have a child why not adopt one of the millions looking for a loving family?
Adoption is a wonderful thing. When I did adoption reports for the court I always tried to fit in the idea that people say you cannot choose your relatives but you have.
I don’t see these as alternatives. One or the other is fine.
My 3 daughters all chose me and despite they are all now adults they still keep in weekly contact at least. My eldest which might surprise people here is afro caribbean
You are blessed and so are they.
Strangely coincidental but the eldest just skyped me after I posted that
Legal question - Seeing has how Nigel Farage has (reportedly) publicly accused me, along with millions of other Americans, of casting "corrupt" postal votes, can I sue him for defamation in an English court?
Would give TSE chance to finally earn the (un)massive retainer yours truly (mis)remembers (not) paying him!
You could report him for hate crimes to the Scottish police. I think they might be a bit snowed under with reports, but as its Farage, perhaps they'll put it in the expedited pile.
It may be a joke to you. But see this. Real people suffer on account of what is whipped up by the right-wing.
rcs1000 - What McArdle said is that "increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness". Ordinarily causes come before effects.
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
Oh, I suspect there are multiple arrows of causality here.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
I don't understand this argument. If a job requires little or no skill to do it but still needs to be done then whether it pays minimum wage or not you still need to hire someone to do it.
Minimum wages have become necessary because employers are using the fact of the existence of taxpayers support for workers as an excuse to pay below living wage. They are asking the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill and therefore their business.
So if you don't want businesses leaching the taxpayer the answer is really one of two options. Either stop paying social support to the employed and see people suffer as a result, or have a minimum wage which forces employers to pay a reasonable amount for the work they want done.
I know which one I support.
I think you are taking a bit of an absolutist approach here.
There are plenty of people who - for one reason or another - have relatively low economic output. If Joe can only produce $10 of widgets an hour, and hiring Joe costs me $16, I'm not going to hire him. On the other hand, if I can pay Joe $8 an hour, then we both win.
Now, you can say that I'm exploiting Joe, but Joe's skills (and wage he can command) are more likely to grow if he's in work, and he's learning.
If he's not working, he's costing the state money in income support / JSA. He's also massively more likely to have mental health issues. And every day he's unemployed makes it less likely someone will employ him.
My preferred scenario is to have universal income, no minimum wage and a straight 25% for (say) the first $30,000 on top of the universal income. In that way, you avoid cliff edges, and ridiculously high marginal rates on the low paid, etc.
Certainly there is little evidence from the UK that the minimum wage pushes up unemployment. Never have we had such low unemployment since we brought it in.
It may well be much more of an issue in less flexible labour markets, but doesn't appear to be a problem for the economy in UK or USA, and obviously benefits the low paid.
rcs1000 - What McArdle said is that "increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness". Ordinarily causes come before effects.
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
Oh, I suspect there are multiple arrows of causality here.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
I don't understand this argument. If a job requires little or no skill to do it but still needs to be done then whether it pays minimum wage or not you still need to hire someone to do it.
Minimum wages have become necessary because employers are using the fact of the existence of taxpayers support for workers as an excuse to pay below living wage. They are asking the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill and therefore their business.
So if you don't want businesses leaching the taxpayer the answer is really one of two options. Either stop paying social support to the employed and see people suffer as a result, or have a minimum wage which forces employers to pay a reasonable amount for the work they want done.
I know which one I support.
I think you are taking a bit of an absolutist approach here.
There are plenty of people who - for one reason or another - have relatively low economic output. If Joe can only produce $10 of widgets an hour, and hiring Joe costs me $16, I'm not going to hire him. On the other hand, if I can pay Joe $8 an hour, then we both win.
Now, you can say that I'm exploiting Joe, but Joe's skills (and wage he can command) are more likely to grow if he's in work, and he's learning.
If he's not working, he's costing the state money in income support / JSA. He's also massively more likely to have mental health issues. And every day he's unemployed makes it less likely someone will employ him.
My preferred scenario is to have universal income, no minimum wage and a straight 25% for (say) the first $30,000 on top of the universal income. In that way, you avoid cliff edges, and ridiculously high marginal rates on the low paid, etc.
Legal question - Seeing has how Nigel Farage has (reportedly) publicly accused me, along with millions of other Americans, of casting "corrupt" postal votes, can I sue him for defamation in an English court?
Would give TSE chance to finally earn the (un)massive retainer yours truly (mis)remembers (not) paying him!
You could report him for hate crimes to the Scottish police. I think they might be a bit snowed under with reports, but as its Farage, perhaps they'll put it in the expedited pile.
It may be a joke to you. But see this. Real people suffer on account of what is whipped up by the right-wing.
“The legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn’t actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee.” https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1777310705420575116
So literally not worth the paper it's written on ?
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
That’s a great example and sorry to hear of the utter bullshit you have to go through, but, it does not surprise me. The service gives every impression of having nobody thinking through the admin nor responding to patients’ feedback.
A sequel to my recent 0801hrs experience (I called one minute after 8am and thus was denied an appointment) was the lady saying that they would release more appointments at 2pm, could I call back then? I said no because I have a meeting at that time, but can I just confirm now (at 0801) that want an appointment? No, she said… you must call back at 2pm…
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Pharmacists can substitutes unless the doctor instructs otherwise
GPs fine - buy their businesses and you can tell them what to do
Car parks… you really have this thing about cash don’t you? But that’s exactly wrong with the NHS! A Cabinet Minister shouldn’t be spending *any* time on what machine is in a car park in Nuneaton
It was an example of the shittiness of front of house delivery FFS. As for me “buying the GPs’ businesses” WTF? What a bizarre response.
Someone else who doesn't worry overmuch about telling the truth under oath.
When Elon Musk was banning people for sharing the name of neo Nazi stonetoss, he was being deposed for a defamation case against him (March 27th) and, under oath, testified that he wanted Twitter users to unmask neo Nazis. https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1777430129633042733
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, .
Trust you !!!
His priority has to be sorting out car parks that take cash 😂😂😂
I visited one in Leicestershire of all places the other day to see an elderly relative who had been transferred there. The car park only took coinage, no cards, no notes, no app, nothing. It was an utter embarrassment. Thankfully I could park instantly via the JustPark app 50 yards around the corner, although the antiquated shite meters deprived the NHS of cash.
But a minor issue compared to the moronic Call Exactly At 8am Or Get Fucked GP booking system. The whole admin of the service is a national embarrassment.
Parking Apps.
The work of Satan.
I now have two on my phone and both work well. But why are there two? Because I live in Wiltshire but only 5 miles from Frome in Somerset and the two councils use… yep a different parking app provider…
Yes, the ones I have work great (one is used by my local hospital TBF) but the proliferation of them is annoying. Tender the contract centrally then just have one for all car parks.
Hospital car parks should give people a choice of what to use, cash, card, app, make it easy for all. It shouldn’t be some sort of krypton factor experience where you only qualify if you happen have to have a fistful of ancient pound coins on you when following an ambulance carrying an elderly relative!
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
You may know the answer to this question, but as most are aware I have had some serious health issues since October with many hospital visits and each time the doctor or consultant asks if it is OK to check my surgery's medication for me
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
It's good practice to check with the patient, as what they are taking doesn't always match GP records.
Not all practices allow hospital access to their prescription records too.
So why isn’t there one (sensible) policy that is applied consistently? This stuff baffles me. If GP practices don’t share their patients records with hospitals, they should, unless the patient has asked them not to.
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
The system, such that anything worthy of the name “system” exists, needs to be vastly more efficient than it is currently. My father is on a range of repeat meds, yet frequently cannot easily get them despite the fact that his prescription has been identical for more than two years.
Thanks to the 100 we have the farce of the County season staring on the 5th April, and seeing Durham vs Hants totally washed out. Not a single ball bowled. As the championship is often close, the lose of any chance of bobbins points or indeed the win is pathetic. Thanks 100. Thanks.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
The system, such that anything worthy of the name “system” exists, needs to be vastly more efficient than it is currently. My father is on a range of repeat meds, yet frequently cannot easily get them despite the fact that his prescription has been identical for more than two years.
We also have a substantial supply problem, not aided by Brexit, but with lots of other factors too.
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
I was staying in Airbnbs during covid, not having a permanent home, and online pharmacies were very useful. They claimed a GP was authorising, but it’s obviously not as good as seeing one in person.
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
What a piece of scum Netanyahu is . Sets a date for the next Gazan slaughter in Rafah because the pro Genocide group in his coalition of evil threatened to pull the plug .
No further proof is needed that Netanyahu will order the slaughter of thousands to save his own skin .
I know the eclipse fascinates many and it is one of nature's wonders that occurs from time to time
Not sure why Sky have devoted a three hour 'live' programme on it passing over the US and Canada though
It’s ok, Big_G, there’s nothing else going on in the world to report on… As ever news moves in cycles. Even Gaza seems to be slipping down the priority list on the news.
Hamas rejecting the ceasefire proposals this evening can wait
Doesn’t fit the one side good / other side bad narrative
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
There have also been shortage of supplies both locally and nationally and in my case with my issues I would not buy any prescriptive medicines online
In the US, a recent study -- which I learned about from a Megan McArdle column -- found that increasing the minimum wage increased homelessness.
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Indeed. All Labour need to do to start fixing the NHS is listen to people who use it regularly - I guarantee every one of them will have suggestions for improvements that can be cheaply and quickly implemented. There is such a gross amount of inefficiency it would be hard not find easy wins.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
In England at least the NHS app allows you to order your prescription meds. If you haven’t tried, please do.
Yes, I get my repeat prescriptions via the App, it's easy and they are ready at my neighbourhood pharmacy within 48 hours.
That’s quicker than mine (five working days). A decent system though.
Our repeat prescriptions are sent out to our Chemist with a warning it could take 5 days due to the chemist picking up the prescriptions and checking their stock of drugs and ordering more if required
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
If its something that the pharmacist needs to order in then it can take longer. Its a feature of small pharmacies that they cannot stock everything.
Why can’t they be mailed if the customer asks (and pays the postage) or bought directly online with a referred prescription or frankly anything that is more convenient than waiting an undefined period of time waiting on a backstreet chemist to “get them in stock”?
Lots of online pharmacy now. There are thousands of medications in the BNF, so smaller pharmacies will never have everything. Add in sudden surges and there can be issues. I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
The system, such that anything worthy of the name “system” exists, needs to be vastly more efficient than it is currently. My father is on a range of repeat meds, yet frequently cannot easily get them despite the fact that his prescription has been identical for more than two years.
As I have just said that is because there has been a genuine shortage of supplies of recognised medication
What a piece of scum Netanyahu is . Sets a date for the next Gazan slaughter in Rafah because the pro Genocide group in his coalition of evil threatened to pull the plug .
No further proof is needed that Netanyahu will order the slaughter of thousands to save his own skin .
Good of Hamas to agree NOT to go for a ceasefire. As much as Netanyahu is scum, Hamas are just as bad.
(I have the 4th edition but doubt that he has changed his opinion much since then.)
Incidentally, the minimum wage is one of three issues I can think of that economists have trouble explaining to much of the public. The other two are rent control and free trade. (Any economists here can probably add to that little list.)
Poor old Rachel Reeves - she not only has to fix the country, but the whole ill reputation of the left for economic incompetence visits her shoulders too.
Obviously there's a path that she can follow which will deliver something of this, but the world and his wife will make that path obscure for her.
The BBC (or others) would do well to see if they can embed a lip-locked journalist with her on her journey.
The rest of us should work out how to fix the bloody place without Ms Reeves!
She has a job and a half to do , no doubt about it. And Starmer’s government will fall or rise on how she does.
Ultimately, I am a patriot above all. For that reason I hope she surprises and exhilarates me. We have a lot of hard work to do as a nation and we need policies that push us the right way instead of having us to swim against the tide. Surprise me. Please.
Patriot - me too. I think most of us. The trick is to get all those people who don't work working and all those people that do work producing. No idea how she (or anyone else) does that.
Someone is unable to have a child for whatever reason. So someone helps. And a child desperately wanted comes into the world surrounded by love.
Who the hell can have a problem with this?
Raises his hand
Not for religous reasons however. You can't have a child why not adopt one of the millions looking for a loving family?
Adoption is a wonderful thing. When I did adoption reports for the court I always tried to fit in the idea that people say you cannot choose your relatives but you have.
I don’t see these as alternatives. One or the other is fine.
My 3 daughters all chose me and despite they are all now adults they still keep in weekly contact at least. My eldest which might surprise people here is afro caribbean
You are blessed and so are they.
Strangely coincidental but the eldest just skyped me after I posted that
What a piece of scum Netanyahu is . Sets a date for the next Gazan slaughter in Rafah because the pro Genocide group in his coalition of evil threatened to pull the plug .
No further proof is needed that Netanyahu will order the slaughter of thousands to save his own skin .
Good of Hamas to agree NOT to go for a ceasefire. As much as Netanyahu is scum, Hamas are just as bad.
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
Pharmacists can substitutes unless the doctor instructs otherwise
GPs fine - buy their businesses and you can tell them what to do
Car parks… you really have this thing about cash don’t you? But that’s exactly wrong with the NHS! A Cabinet Minister shouldn’t be spending *any* time on what machine is in a car park in Nuneaton
It was an example of the shittiness of front of house delivery FFS. As for me “buying the GPs’ businesses” WTF? What a bizarre response.
GPs are private contractors to the NHS. technically…
EXC: @wesstreeting throws down the gauntlet saying time for private sector help to reduce waiting lists - and no more cash for heath service without “major surgery” of reform.
In punchy @thesun piece tomorrow he warns: “Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster.”
Private companies do a lot of waiting list work already, and have done for decades. They cherry pick the straightforward cases and leave the complex and expensive work to the rNHS, I really don't see what is new or "Reforming" about this.
There isn't much evidence that it has resolved the fundamental problem of capacity, not least because the personnel in the private sector were nearly all trained in the NHS
Wes Streeting combines bombastic language with a failure to understand the issues to the point that I won't support Labour.
It's not that I an against the private sector, indeed I advocated how to make it work in my first PB header.
Yes, Streeting is worrying me. He doesn't realise that the NHS or social care is going to have to expand for the next 15 years. Talking hard to the NHS may play well in Tufton Street now, or ten years ago, but now is really not the time.
Starmer was extolling the use of the private sector in helping to reduce the waiting lists and in using technology better
The amazing change in politics is that a Labour PM and Health Secretary could actually get away with this when conservative ones would be shouted down as 'privatisation'
Notwithstanding, it is sensible and should do Labour no harm with the centre ground
We need a Labour government to do serious reform of the NHS just as we probably need the Tories to take us back into the EU. But they need to do things sensibly. Streeting has obviously been thinking about the issues but that’s no guarantee of good policy. Gove spent rather a lot of time thinking about the issues in education before 2010, and I’m not sure the country is the better for it.
The first thing Streeting should do is focus on the NHS’s absolutely pisspoor, medieval admin and antiquated systems. The Call Your GP At Exactly 8am bollocks, the provincial Car Parks That Accept Only Pound Coins, the Only The Exact Prescription of Generic Pills insanity.
The whole front of house needs immediate reform. It’s a pile of utter garbage.
My local hairdresser has a better appointment booking system than the GP. Get them on treatwell. And hospital appointments confirmed by text not letter.
Also, annual “compulsory” (strongly advised) health checkup for all over 50s. Could save a fortune in later costs.
That’s a great example. Treatwell. It takes seconds to book an appointment and is done at the fraction of the cost than the NHS, which involves calling a very stressed out lady at the crack of dawn. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? The embrace of even basic technology should be at the forefront of sweeping changes to the admin of the service.
I remember getting an Important Appointment Letter from the NHS a few
years ago. Boldly emblazoned with the name of the unit I had to attend. No address. No contact number. No postcode. No email address (obviously). Just had to google it and hope I picked the right option from the dozens of units with the same name.
Things like this baffle me.
My son broke a bone recently. I was given a mobile number to call after ten days to get the x-Ray analysis. No matter when I tried the number, it was unobtainable. There was simply no way of reaching the x-Ray team.
Days later, exasperated, I texted the number, just to see what would happen. A nurse rang me straight back seconds later, on that same number, to give me the results.
The NHS app is brilliant for this, I received same day results from a chest X-ray, and my recent blood tests came through after a weekend at Easter. No need to call anyone - I thoroughly recommend it.
Results only show on this when filed by the Practice, so if you see it then they have.
You may know the answer to this question, but as most are aware I have had some serious health issues since October with many hospital visits and each time the doctor or consultant asks if it is OK to check my surgery's medication for me
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
It's good practice to check with the patient, as what they are taking doesn't always match GP records.
Not all practices allow hospital access to their prescription records too.
So why isn’t there one (sensible) policy that is applied consistently? This stuff baffles me. If GP practices don’t share their patients records with hospitals, they should, unless the patient has asked them not to.
NHS admin is seven shades of shit.
It's because GP practices are run independently, and some feel strongly about data protection.
The flipside of individuality is lack of integration.
In most countries doctors communicate even less as they work even more autonomously.
Donald Trump has said decisions about abortion rights should be left to the states, releasing a statement on the contentious election issue on Monday.
Many in his Republican Party had wanted him to back a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
But Mr Trump said policies should be set by individual states - as they have been since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision in 2022.
Evangelicals won't be too happy, they want a nationwide abortion ban if the GOP win in November the Presidency and Congress. Trump needs a big evangelical turnout for him in November to win back the White House and can't afford for some of them to stay home.
'Conservative reaction to Mr Trump's message has been largely negative, with his former Vice-President Mike Pence calling it "a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him..Kristan Hawkins, the head of the Students for Life of America, reaffirmed her support for the former president but added there was "some work to do to educate President Trump" on the issue.'
I know the eclipse fascinates many and it is one of nature's wonders that occurs from time to time
Not sure why Sky have devoted a three hour 'live' programme on it passing over the US and Canada though
It’s ok, Big_G, there’s nothing else going on in the world to report on… As ever news moves in cycles. Even Gaza seems to be slipping down the priority list on the news.
Hamas rejecting the ceasefire proposals this evening can wait
Doesn’t fit the one side good / other side bad narrative
"Hamas rejects the ceasefire" fits the Israeli narrative.
Hamas's own position seems to be that Israel offered nothing new.
Al Jazeera say "Conflicting reports are emerging on Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo with Egyptian media reporting 'significant progress', but Hamas and Israeli officials saying no agreement is close."
So now Netanyahu declares that a date has been set for the assault on Rafah, i.e. on the area into which the Israeli military have concentrated a large majority of the Gaza population, most of whom are now at least two-times refugees. Presumably Netanyahu's ultra-rightwing (and I mean "ultra") ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich won't now be withdrawing their support from his administration.
Donald Trump has said decisions about abortion rights should be left to the states, releasing a statement on the contentious election issue on Monday.
Many in his Republican Party had wanted him to back a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
But Mr Trump said policies should be set by individual states - as they have been since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision in 2022.
Evangelicals won't be too happy, they want a nationwide abortion ban if the GOP win in November the Presidency and Congress.
'Conservative reaction to Mr Trump's message has been largely negative, with his former Vice-President Mike Pence calling it "a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him..Kristan Hawkins, the head of the Students for Life of America, reaffirmed her support for the former president but added there was "some work to do to educate President Trump" on the issue.'
Trump is clearly a moderating influence on the right of American politics. It takes a lot of political skill to neutralise an issue as contentious as this.
What a piece of scum Netanyahu is . Sets a date for the next Gazan slaughter in Rafah because the pro Genocide group in his coalition of evil threatened to pull the plug .
No further proof is needed that Netanyahu will order the slaughter of thousands to save his own skin .
Good of Hamas to agree NOT to go for a ceasefire. As much as Netanyahu is scum, Hamas are just as bad.
Comments
Mind you, them beams take a lot of punishment. Also, I suspect a lot of noise is made by just a few beetles.
Put it this way, if they'sd been chomping away for centuries the way they sounded as if they were chomping, our roof would have been a pile of sawdust.
We can never perfectly calibrate a benefits system. If we bias the system against giving people too much, or giving money to too many, that can have bad effects that I don't think we consider enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suWVo8pvYvc
(The US has a wide range of minimum wages, which makes this kind of study possible, here.)
The argument goes like this: When the minimum is raised, the least productive workers are forced out of the job market. With zero income, it no longer makes sense for others to provide these workers very low-cost housing, like the "flop houses" once found in nearly every large American city.
Of course, I'd like to see other economists try to replicate this work, but there is nothing implausible about the conclusions. And it is a fact that California has a very high minimum wage, and a very high level of homelessness.
(You can hear the argument in this Roger Miller classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c7D0YsgnrE )
It was the Conwy ILB who undertook the rescue but the crews are colleagues
Llandudno has an AWB (all weather boat) and an ILB (inshore as per Conwy) and our son is based in Llandudno and crews both as required
Indeed he and his colleagues towed a stricken yacht with 5 on board into Conwy last week as Conwy has a harbour
I think when people can't afford housing, politicians think they can solve the issue by raising wages by dictat. Which, of course, doesn't work. Because the fundamental issue is a lack of affordable housing.
I offer up a little personal example; I suffer from Asthma and use a Ventolin vapour inhaler to control it, an unfortunately all too common circumstance now. To get a replacement inhaler I have to phone my GP surgery between 8:30 and 11:30 and leave a message on an answerphone. No easy, quick clicking of a button on a web page or app. A medical receptionist then has to listen to all the recorded messages and enter them into the computer. If the message isn't sufficiently clear it gets disregarded with no feedback - the surgery won't phone to confirm anything.
After three days a prescription should get written - if there's an issue this is the first I'll find out about it, and if something is wrong the process repeats with another three-day delay.
Late year NHS Scotland (unsure if it's the same in England or Wales) decided to stop issuing normal Ventolin inhalers in favour of a smaller, more 'eco-friendly' version. These are less efficient then the old ones and run out quicker, so the whole prescription process has to happen more frequently, tying up scarce resources.
Recently they stopped issuing even the new eco Ventolin inhalers and moved to using powder inhalers by default. Those just don't work for me, they didn't when I first tried one in the 80s and still don't. But the surgery say they cannot write a prescription for Ventolin inhalers anymore, so a generic prescription goes to the grossly overworked local pharmacy, which then has to waste time phoning the surgery to get explicit permission to dispense a Ventolin inhaler instead of the powder one. This, apparently, is the only way to make things work.
It's hard to see how much more convoluted and wasteful this process could actually be without it breaking down completely.
The only snag is, when they asked me in for a blood test a week ago none of the appointments they could offer were at times I could make. But they will presumably send the message again next month by which time things will likely have quietened down somewhat.
I do have an annual COPD and asthma review and the medication is decided by the ANP and amended or left as previously depending on my review
Not sure why Sky have devoted a three hour 'live' programme on it passing over the US and Canada though
(Though it is, of course, possible that causality can run both ways.)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4583971/user-clip-dang-rod-chandler
Dang Me - Roger Miller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg9YGmmPX6w
SSI - Worth noting that in 2020, the former GOP Congressman
. . . endorsed Democrat Joe Biden during the 2020 United States presidential election, wanting to prevent the re-election of President Donald Trump.
Chandler was one of 12 former Republican U.S. Representatives who filed an amicus brief in Trump v. Anderson, supporting the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to disqualify former President Donald Trump as a candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Chandler
The ideal result for Farage would be the Conservatives in second place but with say 70-100 MPs. The gutted rump would then turn to him for salvation leading to a merger between Conservative and Reform in 2025 or 2026.
As ever news moves in cycles. Even Gaza seems to be slipping down the priority list on the news.
It is known.
Er' you did say "width of the band", not the length or area. Which for a moving circular projection from a spherical object, is going to be much the same as the diameter of the moon.
So - for example - it's perfectly possible that panhandling is more lucrative in places with higher minimum wages, and therefore attract more homeless people.
To really understand it, one needs to see if housing occupancy rates drop after the implementation of a minimum wage. (I generally oppose minimum wages, because they price lower skilled people out the labour market. But I'm also sceptical that that will be the only factor at work.)
GPs fine - buy their businesses and you can tell them what to do
Car parks… you really have this thing about cash don’t you? But that’s exactly wrong with the NHS! A Cabinet Minister shouldn’t be spending *any* time on what machine is in a car park in Nuneaton
Targets distort symptoms, its as simple as that.
(I like "King of the Road" more than the other song. And prefer the 4th Brandenburg to either. Over the years, when I was still driving, I found it a wonderful relaxer when the traffic made me start getting tense.)
The work of Satan.
Our chemist is 3 miles from our surgery
Minimum wages have become necessary because employers are using the fact of the existence of taxpayers support for workers as an excuse to pay below living wage. They are asking the taxpayer to subsidise their wage bill and therefore their business.
So if you don't want businesses leaching the taxpayer the answer is really one of two options. Either stop paying social support to the employed and see people suffer as a result, or have a minimum wage which forces employers to pay a reasonable amount for the work they want done.
I know which one I support.
I would have thought they could do this without needing my approval, indeed I would have thought this information was essential for their treatments
Not all practices allow hospital access to their prescription records too.
1) nothing new or innovative indeed used back into the Blair years.
2) not always safe or appropriate.
But not on the scale which would make a significant difference to the problem.
There are plenty of people who - for one reason or another - have relatively low economic output. If Joe can only produce $10 of widgets an hour, and hiring Joe costs me $16, I'm not going to hire him. On the other hand, if I can pay Joe $8 an hour, then we both win.
Now, you can say that I'm exploiting Joe, but Joe's skills (and wage he can command) are more likely to grow if he's in work, and he's learning.
If he's not working, he's costing the state money in income support / JSA. He's also massively more likely to have mental health issues. And every day he's unemployed makes it less likely someone will employ him.
My preferred scenario is to have universal income, no minimum wage and a straight 25% for (say) the first $30,000 on top of the universal income. In that way, you avoid cliff edges, and ridiculously high marginal rates on the low paid, etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/08/anger-debate-scottish-hate-crime-law-campaigners-stirring-up
It may well be much more of an issue in less flexible labour markets, but doesn't appear to be a problem for the economy in UK or USA, and obviously benefits the low paid.
Apart from getting drenched, I can still bowl so that’s good!
“The legal document from Knight Specialty Insurance Company doesn’t actually promise it will pay the money if the former president loses his $464 million bank fraud case on appeal. Instead, it says Trump will pay, negating the whole point of an insurance company guarantee.”
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1777310705420575116
So literally not worth the paper it's written on ?
A sequel to my recent 0801hrs experience (I called one minute after 8am and thus was denied an appointment) was the lady saying that they would release more appointments at 2pm, could I call back then? I said no because I have a meeting at that time, but can I just confirm now (at 0801) that want an appointment? No, she said… you must call back at 2pm…
When Elon Musk was banning people for sharing the name of neo Nazi stonetoss, he was being deposed for a defamation case against him (March 27th) and, under oath, testified that he wanted Twitter users to unmask neo Nazis.
https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1777430129633042733
Hospital car parks should give people a choice of what to use, cash, card, app, make it easy for all. It shouldn’t be some sort of krypton factor experience where you only qualify if you happen have to have a fistful of ancient pound coins on you when following an ambulance carrying an elderly relative!
I’m not confident that online pharmacies are as rigorous in checking what goes out as a high street store, but I cannot prove that. The role of the professional in the system, the pharmacist, is crucial. It’s not a case of just taking a packet of a shelf, there are important checks against existing medications too.
NHS admin is seven shades of shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZWvi0MaIZs
They clap when he starts but almost boo when he sings “don’t pay no union dues”.
Thanks to the 100 we have the farce of the County season staring on the 5th April, and seeing Durham vs Hants totally washed out. Not a single ball bowled.
As the championship is often close, the lose of any chance of bobbins points or indeed the win is pathetic.
Thanks 100. Thanks.
Just in: Trump’s bid for emergency relief to halt trial ~ for change of venue ~ is denied.
Gag order motion comes tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/frankrunyeon/status/1777443163789054190
No further proof is needed that Netanyahu will order the slaughter of thousands to save his own skin .
(Thought he did back LBJ.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68761083
Donald Trump has said decisions about abortion rights should be left to the states, releasing a statement on the contentious election issue on Monday.
Many in his Republican Party had wanted him to back a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
But Mr Trump said policies should be set by individual states - as they have been since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision in 2022.
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Economics-N-Gregory-Mankiw/dp/1305585127
(I have the 4th edition but doubt that he has changed his opinion much since then.)
Incidentally, the minimum wage is one of three issues I can think of that economists have trouble explaining to much of the public. The other two are rent control and free trade. (Any economists here can probably add to that little list.)
The flipside of individuality is lack of integration.
In most countries doctors communicate even less as they work even more autonomously.
'Conservative reaction to Mr Trump's message has been largely negative, with his former Vice-President Mike Pence calling it "a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him..Kristan Hawkins, the head of the Students for Life of America, reaffirmed her support for the former president but added there was "some work to do to educate President Trump" on the issue.'
Hamas's own position seems to be that Israel offered nothing new.
Al Jazeera say "Conflicting reports are emerging on Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo with Egyptian media reporting 'significant progress', but Hamas and Israeli officials saying no agreement is close."
So now Netanyahu declares that a date has been set for the assault on Rafah, i.e. on the area into which the Israeli military have concentrated a large majority of the Gaza population, most of whom are now at least two-times refugees. Presumably Netanyahu's ultra-rightwing (and I mean "ultra") ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich won't now be withdrawing their support from his administration.