The noises from the PB intelligentsia about Oldham sound so similar to the comments that were made about the Liberals and SLAB in GE2015.
People just refused to believe that the Liberals could be hurt badly in the SW and that SLAB could be left with less than 15 to 20 seats (with a few exceptions). I think perhaps people are refusing to focus on the noises coming out of the constituencies. Because they have a very familiar ring.
In the SW, the LIberal which were so surely going to hang onto lots of seats lost the lot.
In Scotland, SLAB who were so surely going to hang onto at least a dozen seats probably 20, managed to keep one.
The message is clear on Oldham on Thursday. It will be UKIP. And it will be UKIP by more than 2000 votes.
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Really, F....Off! No-one was looking forward to that. No-one. Me in particular. Some of us on here are real patients seeing real doctors with real medical problems who were worried that our health would be compromised by a strike. We don't give a toss about headlines.
And some of us have real experience of what happens when doctors go on strike. Bad headlines is the least of it.
You know that if the strike had gone ahead there would have been people itching to pin a death onto it solely to get back at the NHS which they despise.
I know no such thing. I do know that the only person who made heartless comments about it was you, so desperate have you been to pin blame on whose whom you claim "despise" the NHS.
I do know that when doctors go on strike patients do die if they don't get treatment on time. I know this not because I despise the NHS (I am currently dependant on it, more than I would like but that's ill health for you) but because this is what happened to my own father, a doctor, the last time there was a doctors' strike. And when I pointed this out to you the last time you made your vile insinuations you scuttled off - unlike others on here like Dr Sox, who at least had the decency and courtesy to engage with the arguments - until you popped up again this evening.
Patients die all the time despite doctors best efforts. If there had been a strike there would have been people rushing to get the headlines out, and solely to run down the NHS. As has been pointed out the evidence is that during periods of strike there are fewer deaths than expected.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Really, F....Off! No-one was looking forward to that. No-one. Me in particular. Some of us on here are real patients seeing real doctors with real medical problems who were worried that our health would be compromised by a strike. We don't give a toss about headlines.
And some of us have real experience of what happens when doctors go on strike. Bad headlines is the least of it.
You know that if the strike had gone ahead there would have been people itching to pin a death onto it solely to get back at the NHS which they despise.
I know no such thing. I do know that the only person who made heartless comments about it was you, so desperate have you been to pin blame on whose whom you claim "despise" the NHS.
I do know that when doctors go on strike patients do die if they don't get treatment on time. I know this not because I despise the NHS (I am currently dependant on it, more than I would like but that's ill health for you) but because this is what happened to my own father, a doctor, the last time there was a doctors' strike. And when I pointed this out to you the last time you made your vile insinuations you scuttled off - unlike others on here like Dr Sox, who at least had the decency and courtesy to engage with the arguments - until you popped up again this evening.
Patients die all the time despite doctors best efforts. If there had been a strike there would have been people rushing to get the headlines out, and solely to run down the NHS. As has been pointed out the evidence is that during periods of strike there are fewer deaths than expected.
Of course immediate deaths go down in doctors strikes (no one dies of arthritis of the hip - until it is operated on), but that is an epidemiologists perspective. Each day 1400 people die and that number will be much the same as usual tommorow, with or without a strike. The individuals may vary though.
I'm off to Vienna next week. Do any here know the city - and could you make any recommendations if so?
Thanks
Heeresgeschichtes Museum. Lots of interesting stuff from the Austro-Ottoman wars and from Austria-Hungary in general, including the uniform Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand was wearing when he was shot, and the car he was in. Plus some interesting Skodas. Also, try a brewpub called Siebensternbräu.
Many thanks for that John. Can check out the car registration plate - once read that in one of those great coincidences it was A 11-11-18 - the date of the Armistice that ended the war...
Agence France-Presse @AFP 2m2 minutes ago #BREAKING Putin says Turkey shot down Russian warplane to protect IS oil trade
Putin's deliberately baiting the Turks into doing something stupid.
Or he's got some lovely intel he's about to deploy. Russian spooks are very good.
"ISIS is a reality and we have to accept that we cannot eradicate a well-organized and popular establishment such as the Islamic State; therefore I urge my western colleagues to revise their mindset about Islamic political currents, put aside their cynical mentalité and thwart Vladimir Putin's plans to crush Syrian Islamist revolutionaries,” - Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, 24 Nov http://tinyurl.com/gqzloj9
Turkey openly supports ISIS.
We're going to bomb Turkey then?
Turkey does not openly support ISIS. US planes are using Turkish bases to fly missions against ISIS. ISIS were behind a recent suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc.
Turkey is openly fighting a war against its own separatists.
So they're bombing their own people?
Suruc was IS targeting the same Kurdish separatists you speak of.
They won't be doing that any more, not unless they want to go back to the 16th century (and not in the way Erdogan intends).
Oh, you silly conspiracy theorist you.
Erdogan does not want to go back to the 16th, or any other century. He's not backwards, although it does suits your pro-Putin agenda to spout such utter rubbish.
You really are a silly sausage. And it's no wonder, given the 'sources' you often use. Alex Jones, ffs ...
So, which part of my Alex Jones source do you dispute? That should be fairly easy, we all know you're intelligent enough to read a source before you dismiss it.
I think FWIW that Labour will probably hold Oldham, more comfortably than we might assume - a lot of the toing and froing over Syria will pass most voters by - but down on the GE. It will not bode well for the future for Labour but it will be a win and therefore banked by Corbyn et al. Even if some former Labour voters desert Labour, I'm not sure how many will cross over to UKIP rather than stay at home. Plus the Labour candidate seems broadly sensible and not a loon so easy for Labour voters who don't like Corbyn to ignore him and vote for their local man.
It would be more fun if it were otherwise.
OTOH if UKIP do win perhaps the lesson to be learnt is to keep Farage well away. He's been largely invisible in this election. Or is it that we can't see him behind all those Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back?
If UKIP do win then Farage will have 2 MPs who can fall out with him, and each other. Nigel will look increasingly like yesterdays man.
But I expect Labour to win. Turnout about 35% overall, but likely that the turnout will be high for British Asians and very few will be kippers. Many both white and Asian are anti-bombing. I also expect that the Tory vote will go down by just a bit and the LDs will hold their deposit.
A NoJam PB contest would be fun, even if it postpones the much awaited AV thread.
I don't think UKIP winning would see the demise of Farage. In fact it would restart the UKIP bandwagon in earnest.
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
The NHS does a pretty good job, certainly as good a job as should be expected of any health care provider. My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
The biggest problem the NHS has is the "look at me" brigade of self-interested people who expect the world to revolve around them and the general Blame Culture that is pandered to by the UK media.
I think FWIW that Labour will probably hold Oldham, more comfortably than we might assume - a lot of the toing and froing over Syria will pass most voters by - but down on the GE. It will not bode well for the future for Labour but it will be a win and therefore banked by Corbyn et al. Even if some former Labour voters desert Labour, I'm not sure how many will cross over to UKIP rather than stay at home. Plus the Labour candidate seems broadly sensible and not a loon so easy for Labour voters who don't like Corbyn to ignore him and vote for their local man.
It would be more fun if it were otherwise.
OTOH if UKIP do win perhaps the lesson to be learnt is to keep Farage well away. He's been largely invisible in this election. Or is it that we can't see him behind all those Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back?
If UKIP do win then Farage will have 2 MPs who can fall out with him, and each other. Nigel will look increasingly like yesterdays man.
But I expect Labour to win. Turnout about 35% overall, but likely that the turnout will be high for British Asians and very few will be kippers. Many both white and Asian are anti-bombing. I also expect that the Tory vote will go down by just a bit and the LDs will hold their deposit.
A NoJam PB contest would be fun, even if it postpones the much awaited AV thread.
I don't think UKIP winning would see the demise of Farage. In fact it would restart the UKIP bandwagon in earnest.
If UKIP win or lose Oldham, and whether we leave or remain in the EU, it will be bad for Farage!
@Kevin_Maguire: Lot of inevitability today: Cons on independent sleaze inquiry, Corbyn a free vote and Hunt the Acas doctors' deal. All did it the hard way
Only one of these is really being talked about. The Conservatives are very lucky that Labour are currently the quarry.
Agence France-Presse @AFP 2m2 minutes ago #BREAKING Putin says Turkey shot down Russian warplane to protect IS oil trade
Putin's deliberately baiting the Turks into doing something stupid.
Or he's got some lovely intel he's about to deploy. Russian spooks are very good.
"ISIS is a reality and we have to accept that we cannot eradicate a well-organized and popular establishment such as the Islamic State; therefore I urge my western colleagues to revise their mindset about Islamic political currents, put aside their cynical mentalité and thwart Vladimir Putin's plans to crush Syrian Islamist revolutionaries,” - Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, 24 Nov http://tinyurl.com/gqzloj9
Turkey openly supports ISIS.
We're going to bomb Turkey then?
Turkey does not openly support ISIS. US planes are using Turkish bases to fly missions against ISIS. ISIS were behind a recent suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc.
Turkey is openly fighting a war against its own separatists.
So they're bombing their own people?
Suruc was IS targeting the same Kurdish separatists you speak of.
They won't be doing that any more, not unless they want to go back to the 16th century (and not in the way Erdogan intends).
Oh, you silly conspiracy theorist you.
Erdogan does not want to go back to the 16th, or any other century. He's not backwards, although it does suits your pro-Putin agenda to spout such utter rubbish.
You really are a silly sausage. And it's no wonder, given the 'sources' you often use. Alex Jones, ffs ...
So, which part of my Alex Jones source do you dispute? That should be fairly easy, we all know you're intelligent enough to read a source before you dismiss it.
I like that his wiki page starts with "Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones is an American conspiracy theorist ..."
Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
If you continue to access the site in this way, I shall either ban you or make it clear that you are accessing the site in a way designed to hide your real geographical location.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
I think FWIW that Labour will probably hold Oldham, more comfortably than we might assume - a lot of the toing and froing over Syria will pass most voters by - but down on the GE. It will not bode well for the future for Labour but it will be a win and therefore banked by Corbyn et al. Even if some former Labour voters desert Labour, I'm not sure how many will cross over to UKIP rather than stay at home. Plus the Labour candidate seems broadly sensible and not a loon so easy for Labour voters who don't like Corbyn to ignore him and vote for their local man.
It would be more fun if it were otherwise.
OTOH if UKIP do win perhaps the lesson to be learnt is to keep Farage well away. He's been largely invisible in this election. Or is it that we can't see him behind all those Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back?
If UKIP do win then Farage will have 2 MPs who can fall out with him, and each other. Nigel will look increasingly like yesterdays man.
But I expect Labour to win. Turnout about 35% overall, but likely that the turnout will be high for British Asians and very few will be kippers. Many both white and Asian are anti-bombing. I also expect that the Tory vote will go down by just a bit and the LDs will hold their deposit.
A NoJam PB contest would be fun, even if it postpones the much awaited AV thread.
I don't think UKIP winning would see the demise of Farage. In fact it would restart the UKIP bandwagon in earnest.
If UKIP win or lose Oldham, and whether we leave or remain in the EU, it will be bad for Farage!
Actually, if the UK were to leave the EU, I think it would be quite bad for UKIP (the political party). However, it would make most (although bizarrely not all) of its supporters quite happy.
SITE MESSAGE Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
SITE MESSAGE Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
Err....
What I meant was: if you hypothetically claimed to be a Cheshire farmer, but appeared to access the site from a different IP all over the world, with no cookies every time you came (as you came through the Tor network), then - as site admin - I'm allowed to be pretty suspicious of your claim that you're a Cheshire farmer.
I'm not going to name names unless the behaviour persists.
I think FWIW that Labour will probably hold Oldham, more comfortably than we might assume - a lot of the toing and froing over Syria will pass most voters by - but down on the GE. It will not bode well for the future for Labour but it will be a win and therefore banked by Corbyn et al. Even if some former Labour voters desert Labour, I'm not sure how many will cross over to UKIP rather than stay at home. Plus the Labour candidate seems broadly sensible and not a loon so easy for Labour voters who don't like Corbyn to ignore him and vote for their local man.
It would be more fun if it were otherwise.
OTOH if UKIP do win perhaps the lesson to be learnt is to keep Farage well away. He's been largely invisible in this election. Or is it that we can't see him behind all those Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back?
If UKIP do win then Farage will have 2 MPs who can fall out with him, and each other. Nigel will look increasingly like yesterdays man.
But I expect Labour to win. Turnout about 35% overall, but likely that the turnout will be high for British Asians and very few will be kippers. Many both white and Asian are anti-bombing. I also expect that the Tory vote will go down by just a bit and the LDs will hold their deposit.
A NoJam PB contest would be fun, even if it postpones the much awaited AV thread.
I don't think UKIP winning would see the demise of Farage. In fact it would restart the UKIP bandwagon in earnest.
If UKIP win or lose Oldham, and whether we leave or remain in the EU, it will be bad for Farage!
Actually, if the UK were to leave the EU, I think it would be quite bad for UKIP (the political party). However, it would make most (although bizarrely not all) of its supporters quite happy.
I wonder if we did leave, UKIP fold then Labour, or a Camerron type Tory govt/coalition, won 2020 GE with entering the EU in their manifesto, would we just go back in?
I like that his wiki page starts with "Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones is an American conspiracy theorist ..."
I think he's a huge d*ckhead personally, but I used an article apparently by him to show that this IHH 'aid agency' that got their bakery blown up the other day were not all they seem (banned by The Netherlands as a terrorist organisation etc.) and Josias Jessop is beside himself over it. Only trouble is he hasn't come up with anything from it that he actually disputes.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
Is not there a reason why the new work arrangements are being sought. Something to do with patient outcomes?
Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
If you continue to access the site in this way, I shall either ban you or make it clear that you are accessing the site in a way designed to hide your real geographical location.
Sometimes it's necessary if you are on a public wifi with content control filters. PB sometimes gets blocked as being a bit too racy.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
The NHS has over one million staff, spends nearly £150bn a year and treats tens of millions of patient incidents.
If you think that occurs without world class administration, you are not really suitable for the job you describe above.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
Good news is not generally heard. At all. That's the point. The bad cases are not just the exceptions but they are tremendously rare exceptions. Indeed, I have never encountered someone who has had a significant problem in their dealings with the NHS.
The funny thing is, that for most of the sob stories, really the best outcome would be to just tell the moaners to toughen up or simply point out the very basic steps the individual could have taken to aid their own outcome.
For example, if the consultant advises you that you will get an appointment within 3 weeks and after three weeks you sit there instead of phoning them, guess that, that's YOUR fault not the NHS.
But there also has to be a complete rebalance of what is reasonable. People die. They need to accept it.
I think FWIW that Labour will probably hold Oldham, more comfortably than we might assume - a lot of the toing and froing over Syria will pass most voters by - but down on the GE. It will not bode well for the future for Labour but it will be a win and therefore banked by Corbyn et al. Even if some former Labour voters desert Labour, I'm not sure how many will cross over to UKIP rather than stay at home. Plus the Labour candidate seems broadly sensible and not a loon so easy for Labour voters who don't like Corbyn to ignore him and vote for their local man.
It would be more fun if it were otherwise.
OTOH if UKIP do win perhaps the lesson to be learnt is to keep Farage well away. He's been largely invisible in this election. Or is it that we can't see him behind all those Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back?
If UKIP do win then Farage will have 2 MPs who can fall out with him, and each other. Nigel will look increasingly like yesterdays man.
But I expect Labour to win. Turnout about 35% overall, but likely that the turnout will be high for British Asians and very few will be kippers. Many both white and Asian are anti-bombing. I also expect that the Tory vote will go down by just a bit and the LDs will hold their deposit.
A NoJam PB contest would be fun, even if it postpones the much awaited AV thread.
I don't think UKIP winning would see the demise of Farage. In fact it would restart the UKIP bandwagon in earnest.
If UKIP win or lose Oldham, and whether we leave or remain in the EU, it will be bad for Farage!
Actually, if the UK were to leave the EU, I think it would be quite bad for UKIP (the political party). However, it would make most (although bizarrely not all) of its supporters quite happy.
I wonder if we did leave, UKIP fold then Labour, or a Camerron type Tory govt/coalition, won 2020 GE with entering the EU in their manifesto, would we just go back in?
I think big constitutional changes should always require a referendum: EU membership, reform of the House of Lords, voting reform etc.
Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
If you continue to access the site in this way, I shall either ban you or make it clear that you are accessing the site in a way designed to hide your real geographical location.
Sometimes it's necessary if you are on a public wifi with content control filters. PB sometimes gets blocked as being a bit too racy.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
As Scotland is doing.
Scotland which has contained the rise in NHS costs (more or less identical to 2010 while NHS England spends 15% more) while delivering better service levels.
I suspect Lansley has much more to answer for than people already give him (dis)credit.
Erdogan does not want to go back to the 16th, or any other century. He's not backwards, although it does suits your pro-Putin agenda to spout such utter rubbish.
You really are a silly sausage. And it's no wonder, given the 'sources' you often use. Alex Jones, ffs ...
So, which part of my Alex Jones source do you dispute? That should be fairly easy, we all know you're intelligent enough to read a source before you dismiss it.
As I said last night, it was utterly unbalanced (a bit like Jones' supporters). Better to point to the official Wikipedia entry, and / or the links you had 'verified' directly rather than just spamming us with PP's madness.
However: I bet you didn't have time to read and think about all the links on it, did you, to run through all those stages that you so proudly claim to do for all your information? No, you just went on the web and did a search. Which makes it odd that you got PrisonPlanet first, because it doesn't appear first (or near first) on searches for 'IHH' or 'IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation'
Admit it: PP is your usual reading. Which would explain a lot ...
It's also funny that you call an Alex Jones website a 'source'. ROFLMAO.
I mean, who can forget your 'theory' about the Titanic and Olympic being swapped ...
If a session has been scheduled for one day, is there a technical time limit or can the parliamentary "day" be allowed to continue indefinately? I.e. can it be filibustered?
I have no idea if Dair is right about his 2000 ukip majority prediction. He certainly should be: dim lefty labour leader who is soft on terrorism and immigration. Plus an incoherent shadow chancellor and behind them a party terminally split.
Good news is not generally heard. At all. That's the point. The bad cases are not just the exceptions but they are tremendously rare exceptions.
The funny thing is, that for most of the sob stories, really the best outcome would be to just tell the moaners to toughen up or simply point out the very basic steps the individual could have taken to aid their own outcome.
For example, if the consultant advises you that you will get an appointment within 3 weeks and after three weeks you sit there instead of phoning them, guess that, that's YOUR fault not the NHS.
But there also has to be a complete rebalance of what is reasonable. People die. They need to accept it.
I agree with some of that and disagree with some.
That a large organization can spend a lot of money on a lot of staff delivering a lot of healthcare in and of itself proves nothing as to whether it is well-run or not. It tells us that it is functioning to a certain level in an environment with limited competition.
Certainly, I agree that patient expectations can be unreasonable. I do have a dog in the game in that my wife is a physician, my step-daughter intends to become a surgeon (early acceptance into GW Medical School), and her father is a physician. My mother and one sister worked in the NHS. In the US the litigation and blame cultures unreasonably expect perfect outcomes all the time. That is wrong. But it certainly does not mean that all is well in medicine either - healthcare kills far fewer than it treats, but it still kills a lot through incompetence and mistakes - witness the 100k nosocomial infection deaths per year in the US - all pretty much preventable.
The skill to improving the situation is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff amongst the complainers. Not all those who complain are wingeing, and we need to know what is going wrong so we can fix it. Trying to shut them up or telling all of them to toughen up will not help.
Cameron trying to bounce the vote through with this one day debate,
There's already been plenty of debate on the subject. Pass or fail, one full day of debate in addition to that already undertaken is more than sufficient. If we actually see that more than a tiny portion of that day's debate is not rehashed arguments from before, then I will have been proved wrong, but I think I'm safe there.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
Is not there a reason why the new work arrangements are being sought. Something to do with patient outcomes?
The evidence that patient outcomes adjusted for casemix at the weekends are worse is highly dubious. Take the Mirror headline last week. Still birth rates are as high on Wed Thur and Friday as they are on Sat and Sunday. The unusual days were Mon and Tuesday not the weekend, and that was before the authors conclusion that variation had anything to do with medical staffing levels.
You cannot run a 7 day service on 5 days of staffing (across multiple disciplines including social services, pathology, imaging, ambulances, secretarial services, pharmacy etc). To get better outcomes is everyones goal, but denuding midweek services is not the way. To pretend that it can be done without significant funding is mendacious.
I have pointed out many times the recruitment and retention crisis in British medicine. We should aim to have a contract that improves this rather than worsens it. Foundation doctors are currently applying for Specialist Training posts beginning in August. I expect vacancy rates to be higher than ever (50% posts unfilled for GP training in the East Midlands for example), except in Wales and Scotland where Hunt has no power and the old T and C's apply.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Really, F....Off! No-one was looking forward to that. No-one. Me in particular. Some of us on here are real patients seeing real doctors with real medical problems who were worried that our health would be compromised by a strike. We don't give a toss about headlines.
And some of us have real experience of what happens when doctors go on strike. Bad headlines is the least of it.
There are examples of doctors strikes around the world at various times.
One of the interesting results of this is the bizarre empirical outcome that has been found wherever it has occurred. The Death Rate falls**.
**There are of course understandable and explainable reasons for this - but it's interesting, nonetheless.
Is it causation rather than correlation? Also what happens to the death rate later? There must be a time lag effect.
IIRC from a statistics lecture - it is because operations and procedures are postponed. Operations are a focus of risk. One of the successes of modern medicine is balancing the risk of the operation with the probable outcomes of having it or not.
So, an operation may kill you. But it has a much higher chance of curing you, in general.
Most operations can be postponed a couple of days without much effect. So, this means that during a planned strike the number of operations goes down and so does the death rate....
Cameron trying to bounce the vote through with this one day debate,
And labour playing delaying tactics. It comes to something when USA, France and tonight NATO ask us to join their coalition against ISIL and the labour party procrastinate. The time for talking is over, just take the vote
I like that his wiki page starts with "Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones is an American conspiracy theorist ..."
I think he's a huge d*ckhead personally, but I used an article apparently by him to show that this IHH 'aid agency' that got their bakery blown up the other day were not all they seem (banned by The Netherlands as a terrorist organisation etc.) and Josias Jessop is beside himself over it. Only trouble is he hasn't come up with anything from it that he actually disputes.
How about this: they were not banned in the Netherlands. A different organisation with the same initials was banned. Germany went one further, and banned the wrong organisation:
"Not to be confused with the outlawed German association Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation e.V. or the Netherlands-based Internationale Humanitaire Hulporganisatie Nederland."
"That IHH was banned in Germany later turned out to be a mixup between the Turkish İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri and the banned German Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation e.V.."
"The European Commission has said that "regarding the banning of IHH Germany by the German Ministry of Interior, IHH Turkey released a statement in which it claims not to have any links to the Germany-based organisation IHH. This information is confirmed by the German Embassy in Ankara."
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
My wife has - not a condition - but a harmless version of something that can cause problems. So, for years, they have tracked her non-condition, as a valuable example. Except when they lost all the notes. 15 years of research down the drain.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
I don't know how to put this. But does anyone in Labour think that there might be a problem with having a core vote dependant on the Muslim vote at a time when there is significant concern about (a) immigration from the Middle East; (b) integration of such communities and the effects on social cohesion; and (c) the risk of terrorism from groups who are loosely associated with Islam (in their own minds, at least).
It's already a toxic association for Labour and will only get worse with a leadership perceived to be soft on terrorism and a bit too fond of terrorists and despots.
The dependence on the muslim vote will grow until it will determine policy and behaviour.
It's not an association with Islam - it's an association with shouty extremists that is the perception. My Thai Muslim friends are quite clear that they see Labour as favoring the nutters.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
So you have a dog in the fight.
Yes. I had an illness that required 4 hours of surgery. It took me 4 years to get that 4 hours. It was never in doubt that it could only be fixed via a surgeon, everyone knew that from day one. It just took 4 years for my paperwork to be bounced around the country a few times, lost several times and rebuilt from my file copies. I even had to get NHS complaints to deal with NHS managers who ignored paperwork sent to them by my consultants.
The thing is that I was not unique in this. I came across other patients and many of them were also having a bad time of it, in fact I would go so far as to say that I sailed through the process compared to most.
The funny thing is, that for most of the sob stories, really the best outcome would be to just tell the moaners to toughen up or simply point out the very basic steps the individual could have taken to aid their own outcome.
You must live a very sheltered existence. I could put you in touch with dozens of people who are having a hell of a time just getting initial appointments, or others who have huge waits between appointments because paperwork gets lost. I have one friend who waited over a year to get a test result.
For example, if the consultant advises you that you will get an appointment within 3 weeks and after three weeks you sit there instead of phoning them, guess that, that's YOUR fault not the NHS.
I am not that sort of person. By week 4 I was on the phone / email / letter / whatever, but what do you do with phones that never get answered, or emails that never get replies or letters that "never arrived" even when sent Recorded Delivery?
I like that his wiki page starts with "Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones is an American conspiracy theorist ..."
I think he's a huge d*ckhead personally, but I used an article apparently by him to show that this IHH 'aid agency' that got their bakery blown up the other day were not all they seem (banned by The Netherlands as a terrorist organisation etc.) and Josias Jessop is beside himself over it. Only trouble is he hasn't come up with anything from it that he actually disputes.
Seems that there are three IHHs - one Turkish (accused by the Free Syrian Army of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood), one German (banned), and one Dutch (banned)
Plenty of room for confusion - and deliberate confusion by a self-avered conspiracy theorist - but it seems that the one blown up was affiliated with the Turkish NGO, not the banned Dutch one:
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
My wife has - not a condition - but a harmless version of something that can cause problems. So, for years, they have tracked her non-condition, as a valuable example. Except when they lost all the notes. 15 years of research down the drain.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
Anyone can have a copy of their medical records if they are willing to pay for the photocopying. Apply via the Patients Affairs office at the Trust and it will be with you in 28 days.
Interesting detail in today's YouGov: there is absolutely overwhelming backing for the view that political parties should give priority to representing their supporters over winning elections. 71% agree, 9% disagree.
It's the view I've expressed here myself but I'm astonished to see it so widely shared. Obviously it doesn't mean that people necessarily like what parties stand for, but perhaps it's a prerequisite for respect.
My wife has - not a condition - but a harmless version of something that can cause problems. So, for years, they have tracked her non-condition, as a valuable example. Except when they lost all the notes. 15 years of research down the drain.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
That is what I was told, except I reminded them that it was my health and my body they were dealing with so kindly put that paperwork in the copier over there and I will have two copies for my file please....
The evidence that patient outcomes adjusted for casemix at the weekends are worse is highly dubious. Take the Mirror headline last week. Still birth rates are as high on Wed Thur and Friday as they are on Sat and Sunday. The unusual days were Mon and Tuesday not the weekend, and that was before the authors conclusion that variation had anything to do with medical staffing levels.
You cannot run a 7 day service on 5 days of staffing (across multiple disciplines including social services, pathology, imaging, ambulances, secretarial services, pharmacy etc). To get better outcomes is everyones goal, but denuding midweek services is not the way. To pretend that it can be done without significant funding is mendacious.
I have pointed out many times the recruitment and retention crisis in British medicine. We should aim to have a contract that improves this rather than worsens it. Foundation doctors are currently applying for Specialist Training posts beginning in August. I expect vacancy rates to be higher than ever (50% posts unfilled for GP training in the East Midlands for example), except in Wales and Scotland where Hunt has no power and the old T and C's apply.
Thank you for that. I have to say that when I see expressions like ,"Adjusted for casemix" my antennae twitch and, though I have very little time for this government, I have not reached the stage where I am prepared to believe they are going out of their way to pick an argument with the medical profession for the hell of it.
However, I am just a patient seeking information, so I am grateful for your views.
Interesting detail in today's YouGov: there is absolutely overwhelming backing for the view that political parties should give priority to representing their supporters over winning elections. 71% agree, 9% disagree.
It's the view I've expressed here myself but I'm astonished to see it so widely shared. Obviously it doesn't mean that people necessarily like what parties stand for, but perhaps it's a prerequisite for respect.
And that is why Labour will be in the wilderness for years, if not decades
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
My experience for my children and various relatives is that for an extended stay in hospital you have to manage the care yourself. That includes that checking the tests have been order, samples taken, medication and notes communicated at shift changes etc...
In every single hospital stay, the staff have tried, but I kept finding mistakes and omissions. You get very skilled at fixing something while trying to be polite.
Quite simply the administrative and support system does not seem to work. In some hospitals it seems that the probability that a blood test will be done (first time) when ordered by a doctor is in the 80% range, for example
Interesting detail in today's YouGov: there is absolutely overwhelming backing for the view that political parties should give priority to representing their supporters over winning elections. 71% agree, 9% disagree.
It's the view I've expressed here myself but I'm astonished to see it so widely shared. Obviously it doesn't mean that people necessarily like what parties stand for, but perhaps it's a prerequisite for respect.
Does "supporters" mean" voters" or does it mean "members affilliates and three quidders" though?
And does the same apply to the BMA Junior Doctors Committee?
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
My wife has - not a condition - but a harmless version of something that can cause problems. So, for years, they have tracked her non-condition, as a valuable example. Except when they lost all the notes. 15 years of research down the drain.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
Anyone can have a copy of their medical records if they are willing to pay for the photocopying. Apply via the Patients Affairs office at the Trust and it will be with you in 28 days.
Someone tried to claim it was valuable research data so couldn't be released - classic 'crat making up excuses in the vaguely deniable kind of way (bollocks as an excuse, of course). I pretty much elbowed my way to the photocopier....
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
Every patient should take responsibility for their treatment and we should stop making the NHS responsible for patients' notes. Patients should be responsible via an encrypted smart card. The funding model will not change the propensity to loose notes or not.
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
My experience for my children and various relatives is that for an extended stay in hospital you have to manage the care yourself. That includes that checking the tests have been order, samples taken, medication and notes communicated at shift changes etc...
In every single hospital stay, the staff have tried, but I kept finding mistakes and omissions. You get very skilled at fixing something while trying to be polite.
Quite simply the administrative and support system does not seem to work. In some hospitals it seems that the probability that a blood test will be done (first time) when ordered by a doctor is in the 80% range, for example
I would agree with all of that, especially the getting good at " ... fixing something while trying to be polite"
The evidence that patient outcomes adjusted for casemix at the weekends are worse is highly dubious. Take the Mirror headline last week. Still birth rates are as high on Wed Thur and Friday as they are on Sat and Sunday. The unusual days were Mon and Tuesday not the weekend, and that was before the authors conclusion that variation had anything to do with medical staffing levels.
I have pointed out many times the recruitment and retention crisis in British medicine. We should aim to have a contract that improves this rather than worsens it. Foundation doctors are currently applying for Specialist Training posts beginning in August. I expect vacancy rates to be higher than ever (50% posts unfilled for GP training in the East Midlands for example), except in Wales and Scotland where Hunt has no power and the old T and C's apply.
Thank you for that. I have to say that when I see expressions like ,"Adjusted for casemix" my antennae twitch and, though I have very little time for this government, I have not reached the stage where I am prepared to believe they are going out of their way to pick an argument with the medical profession for the hell of it.
However, I am just a patient seeking information, so I am grateful for your views.
A lot of births are induced or are planned sections. These are usually scheduled for early in the week, and rarely at weekends. Hence total births are lower at weekends. Arguably the still birth rate would be lower overrall if (as in some parts of the world) planned sections were done more frequently and natural births less frequently. That is what I mean about casemix.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
An alternative of course is to tax more - you only get what you pay for and for the %age of GDP we devote to health we get a pretty good service.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Really, F....Off! No-one was looking forward to that. No-one. Me in particular. Some of us on here are real patients seeing real doctors with real medical problems who were worried that our health would be compromised by a strike. We don't give a toss about headlines.
And some of us have real experience of what happens when doctors go on strike. Bad headlines is the least of it.
You know that if the strike had gone ahead there would have been people itching to pin a death onto it solely to get back at the NHS which they despise.
I know no such thing. I do know that the only person who made heartless comments about it was you, so desperate have you been to pin blame on whose whom you claim "despise" the NHS.
I do know that when doctors go on strike patients do die if they don't get treatment on time. I know this not because I despise the NHS (I am currently dependant on it, more than I would like but that's ill health for you) but because this is what happened to my own father, a doctor, the last time there was a doctors' strike. And when I pointed this out to you the last time you made your vile insinuations you scuttled off - unlike others on here like Dr Sox, who at least had the decency and courtesy to engage with the arguments - until you popped up again this evening.
First class!
Cyclefree is my favourite poster this year by some distance.
Interesting detail in today's YouGov: there is absolutely overwhelming backing for the view that political parties should give priority to representing their supporters over winning elections. 71% agree, 9% disagree.
It's the view I've expressed here myself but I'm astonished to see it so widely shared. Obviously it doesn't mean that people necessarily like what parties stand for, but perhaps it's a prerequisite for respect.
And that is why Labour will be in the wilderness for years, if not decades
What does 'supporters' mean? Someone who paid £3 to vote in an election? A fully paid up member? A lifetime voter?
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
But getting a 7 day health service - and even if Hunt had had his way there still would be fewer diagnostic services, pharmacy services, portering services, admin services available at weekends - will cost money.
And here's another one knocking the NHS probably because it's publicly funded and they cannot stand their taxes going towards it.
You clearly have no clue what what you are talking about. You do not know me or my opinions on the NHS, so kindly stop telling me that I "... cannot stand their taxes going towards it" because you are wrong. I have no such objection and I never stated that I did.
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
My wife has - not a condition - but a harmless version of something that can cause problems. So, for years, they have tracked her non-condition, as a valuable example. Except when they lost all the notes. 15 years of research down the drain.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
Anyone can have a copy of their medical records if they are willing to pay for the photocopying. Apply via the Patients Affairs office at the Trust and it will be with you in 28 days.
Someone tried to claim it was valuable research data so couldn't be released - classic 'crat making up excuses in the vaguely deniable kind of way (bollocks as an excuse, of course). I pretty much elbowed my way to the photocopier....
You have the right to access the data held on yourself, but obviously not on other people!
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
Is not there a reason why the new work arrangements are being sought. Something to do with patient outcomes?
Nothing to do with patient outcomes, but Hunt will quote you some dodgy statistics to try to convince you that it is - but surely because Cameron said there would be same level of service on a weekend as a weekday and so must be seen to be doing something.
Every patient should take responsibility for their treatment and we should stop making the NHS responsible for patients' notes. Patients should be responsible via an encrypted smart card. The funding model will not change the propensity to loose notes or not.
What a brilliant idea. No one will ever lose their smartcard or forget to bring it with them. It would never develop a fault and scramble all the data into digital mush. All patients are fully cognisant and totally responsible for their actions at all times because no one has mental health issues that cause an inability to cope. Or abuse issues like alcoholism.
SITE MESSAGE Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
Err....
I thought exactly the same! I wouldn't know what Tor'ing or Proxy'ing was if it bit me on the arse
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Really, F....Off! No-one was looking forward to that. No-one. Me in particular. Some of us on here are real patients seeing real doctors with real medical problems who were worried that our health would be compromised by a strike. We don't give a toss about headlines.
And some of us have real experience of what happens when doctors go on strike. Bad headlines is the least of it.
You know that if the strike had gone ahead there would have been people itching to pin a death onto it solely to get back at the NHS which they despise.
I know no such thing. I do know that the only person who made heartless comments about it was you, so desperate have you been to pin blame on whose whom you claim "despise" the NHS.
I do know that when doctors go on strike patients do die if they don't get treatment on time. I know this not because I despise the NHS (I am currently dependant on it, more than I would like but that's ill health for you) but because this is what happened to my own father, a doctor, the last time there was a doctors' strike. And when I pointed this out to you the last time you made your vile insinuations you scuttled off - unlike others on here like Dr Sox, who at least had the decency and courtesy to engage with the arguments - until you popped up again this evening.
First class!
Cyclefree is my favourite poster this year by some distance.
Yes. I had an illness that required 4 hours of surgery. It took me 4 years to get that 4 hours. It was never in doubt that it could only be fixed via a surgeon, everyone knew that from day one. It just took 4 years for my paperwork to be bounced around the country a few times, lost several times and rebuilt from my file copies. I even had to get NHS complaints to deal with NHS managers who ignored paperwork sent to them by my consultants.
The thing is that I was not unique in this. I came across other patients and many of them were also having a bad time of it, in fact I would go so far as to say that I sailed through the process compared to most.
You must live a very sheltered existence. I could put you in touch with dozens of people who are having a hell of a time just getting initial appointments, or others who have huge waits between appointments because paperwork gets lost. I have one friend who waited over a year to get a test result.
I am not that sort of person. By week 4 I was on the phone / email / letter / whatever, but what do you do with phones that never get answered, or emails that never get replies or letters that "never arrived" even when sent Recorded Delivery?
No, you have a dog in the fight because your business is involved in crying wolf over organisational failure.
I've never come across anyone waiting 4 years for any surgery, sounds "truthy" to me. "Required" and "4 years" don't stack up to basic reasonableness tests.
I'm sure inveterate moaners know other inveterate moaners, I'm not surprised out of the tens of million the NHS treats every years, "concern tourists" can find other like minded complainers.
Its hard to work out where you are going wrong. I know if I want to see a doctor, I lift the phone, get answered promptly, make an appointment and go and see the doctor later that or the next day. If I need to contact the hospital about my braces, I phone up, get answered promptly and seen the next day. This is for an entirely elective treatment pathway which is absolutely at the bottom of the priority food chain.
I can only reference the experience of myself, my family and everyone I know. But I know of no-one that has every had a sub-standard experience of the NHS outwith certain reasonable considerations.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
So you have a dog in the fight.
Yes. I had an illness that required 4 hours of surgery. It took me 4 years to get that 4 hours. It was never in doubt that it could only be fixed via a surgeon, everyone knew that from day one. It just took 4 years for my paperwork to be bounced around the country a few times, lost several times and rebuilt from my file copies. I even had to get NHS complaints to deal with NHS managers who ignored paperwork sent to them by my consultants.
The thing is that I was not unique in this. I came across other patients and many of them were also having a bad time of it, in fact I would go so far as to say that I sailed through the process compared to most.
The funny thing is, that for most of the sob stories, really the best outcome would be to just tell the moaners to toughen up or simply point out the very basic steps the individual could have taken to aid their own outcome.
You must live a very sheltered existence. I could put you in touch with dozens of people who are having a hell of a time just getting initial appointments, or others who have huge waits between appointments because paperwork gets lost. I have one friend who waited over a year to get a test result.
For example, if the consultant advises you that you will get an appointment within 3 weeks and after three weeks you sit there instead of phoning them, guess that, that's YOUR fault not the NHS.
I am not that sort of person. By week 4 I was on the phone / email / letter / whatever, but what do you do with phones that never get answered, or emails that never get replies or letters that "never arrived" even when sent Recorded Delivery?
When ringing a consultant or their secretary - and I do regularly - I've never had a phone unanswered,
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
My experience for my children and various relatives is that for an extended stay in hospital you have to manage the care yourself. That includes that checking the tests have been order, samples taken, medication and notes communicated at shift changes etc...
In every single hospital stay, the staff have tried, but I kept finding mistakes and omissions. You get very skilled at fixing something while trying to be polite.
Quite simply the administrative and support system does not seem to work. In some hospitals it seems that the probability that a blood test will be done (first time) when ordered by a doctor is in the 80% range, for example
Part of this confusion is due to loss of continuity of care because of Doctors working shifts, with insufficient handover. This will be worse when staff are rostered off midweek, as different parts of the team will be rostered off at different times.
One of the many things wrong with Hunts proposals is that continuity of care will be even worse than at present. This has adverse consequences for patient care, training of junior doctors and overall team working.
Junior doctors' strikes suspended. Will be difficult news for those of you looking forward to "heartless striking doctors killed my mother" type headlines. Will have to await seeing the concessions that Hunt has made.
Strike suspended until Jan 13th. Any Contract that results from the discussions will go to a ballot of Junior Doctors. With a 98% mandate for strike and 99.5% for industrial action there are going to have to be major changes if it is going to be acceptable.
I am sure you are correct, Doc, and I am sure to settle the matter is going to cost a lot of money. That money will have to come from somewhere, patient care perhaps? Perhaps another department will have its budget raided to buy off the junior doctors, so there will be less money spent on roads or infrastructure or something.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
The new contract costs the same as the old contract. Abandoning it and sticking to the old one will not cost a penny.
Is not there a reason why the new work arrangements are being sought. Something to do with patient outcomes?
Nothing to do with patient outcomes, but Hunt will quote you some dodgy statistics to try to convince you that it is - but surely because Cameron said there would be same level of service on a weekend as a weekday and so must be seen to be doing something.
Having had several years in and out of Hospital with my Sister who passed away last week I can say with absolute experience that Hospitals at the weekends are a disaster with skeleton staff and no diagnostics. It is openly said among patients they fear being in over the weekend. The 7 day service is essential to the health of the Nation but as we are in Wales, I don't have high hopes of this service here
Interesting detail in today's YouGov: there is absolutely overwhelming backing for the view that political parties should give priority to representing their supporters over winning elections. 71% agree, 9% disagree.
Were there follow up questions that flash that out a bit more? Because my first thought is that most people, particularly partisans, think that if their party's supporters' views are represented (that is to say, their own views represented) that of course they will win elections because how could the wider public not support such a reasoned view. That would seem to be an explanation as to why people, left and right, think their more extreme politics would be very popular if only someone had the guts to present them, ignoring that people do and they still aren't popular.
In short, perhaps people think by representing their supporters parties will win elections, so priority doesn't need to be given to the latter as it's achieved by doing the former.
They support prioritization to representing members in theory, but in practice will moan if they then lose an election. If Corbyn represents the views of the members brilliantly (as he appears to be doing given they like what he is doing), and then loses a GE in a bad way (not that there is a 'good' way, but reducing the Tory lead without becoming the largest party would probably be seen as ok), I would bet good money the members would not blame themselves for the views that saw that happen, they'd blame the leader for not doing it well enough or for not diluting it for public consumption. Or blame the public (we've seen this in part - to avoid the 'public are bastards' interpretation, I've seen Corbyn use the 'the public didn't understand' interpretation for the Tories winning).
No, you have a dog in the fight because your business is involved in crying wolf over organisational failure.
No... my business was to come in to organisations having informational failure and help them fix it. I never cried wolf. Not once. They contract me, not the other way about. I am not a saleswoman.
I've never come across anyone waiting 4 years for any surgery, sounds "truthy" to me. "Required" and "4 years" don't stack up to basic reasonableness tests.
Well that is your opinion. I know how long it took because I lived through it and I have the paperwork. FYI, it was supposed to take 18 weeks.
If you do not believe that the exact same isolated incidents that occur in the NHS (such as the ones you highlight) do not occur in every single large organisation in the world, then you are living in some sort of spectacular dreamworld.
I am well aware that organisations have internal problems since I make my living out of removing such problems within companies and businesses.
On the clinical side I would agree with that. Once I got through the admin debacle and got hold of clinicians I liaised directly with them and cut out the admin layer as much as possible. That smoothed a lot of problems out.
My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
My experience for my children and various relatives is that for an extended stay in hospital you have to manage the care yourself. That includes that checking the tests have been order, samples taken, medication and notes communicated at shift changes etc...
In every single hospital stay, the staff have tried, but I kept finding mistakes and omissions. You get very skilled at fixing something while trying to be polite.
Quite simply the administrative and support system does not seem to work. In some hospitals it seems that the probability that a blood test will be done (first time) when ordered by a doctor is in the 80% range, for example
Have the Lib Dems come to a decision on their intentions on the vote on Wednesday. (Thought they were deciding today)
Perhaps the Liberals are learning the wrong lesson from the Labour debacle and see indecision and internal strife as a great way to get publicity.
Whilst I don't agree with the SNP on this and many things despite lots of Scots relatives including my wife, I absolutely respect their integrity in opposing the strikes and in the way Nicola Sturgeon said she would listen to the PM's arguments
You have the right to access the data held on yourself, but obviously not on other people!
A surprising number of staff seemed to disagree with that.
It is a right established under the Data Protection Act
That is what I said when I met resistance. There was only one instance where the admin staff refused point-blank to give me my notes but the consultant got me a copy at my next appointment.
@PickardJE: PLP: Margaret Beckett said leadership reminded her of dark days of 1980s.
Seumas Milne replied that she probably couldn't remember the 80s.
Ken Livingston said 'if she's got dementia let me know, I have some great one-liners about it'.
I've read a sheltered life. How does Milne get to attend PLP meetings.
God knows what the rules are. But as Labour's Chief of Communications I'd guess he's in the room, hovering near the door, making sure he's first out to brief the Chemical Ali lines to the waiting press..
So I see Cameron said that regarding the debate on Syria he would 'ensure the debate lasted the equivalent number of hours of a debate taken over two days'. What chance that is not sufficient for Messrs Corbyn and Watson?
I think it would be hilarious to have literally the whole 24 hours devoted to the debate, and still see STW and others dismiss it as 'only' a day of debate. Not technically an untruth at least.
Comments
I have spent the last four years getting treatment on the NHS. I have dealt with nurses, GPs, consultants, surgeons, Practice Managers and patient groups and the reality is this: Everyone in the NHS generally means well, but collectively they could not organise a p*** up in a brewery.
In the end I had to be my own health care manager. My case file, with all my notes, letters, etc, is over 3 inches thick and I took it with me to every appointment because in about half of my meetings my results or letters had not arrived or had gone missing somewhere. I dread to think how people less used to project management than I am get through the system.
Should link to their English webpages.
The NHS does a pretty good job, certainly as good a job as should be expected of any health care provider. My own experience with long term outpatient care has been excellent, my mother's cancer a few years back had her admitted within 4 day of diagnosis for her op.
The biggest problem the NHS has is the "look at me" brigade of self-interested people who expect the world to revolve around them and the general Blame Culture that is pandered to by the UK media.
Only one of these is really being talked about. The Conservatives are very lucky that Labour are currently the quarry.
http://www.hgm.at/en/exhibitions/exhibitions/sarajevo.html
Those of you accessing the site through Tor or proxies, I know exactly who you are. It makes me incredibly suspicious that you are who you claim you are.
If you continue to access the site in this way, I shall either ban you or make it clear that you are accessing the site in a way designed to hide your real geographical location.
My worry is that in the long term this episode is going to come back and bite the medical profession. Industrial history is full of examples in which strikers, or intended strikers, have seemingly won their battle but go on to face a losing war. Terms and conditions of service in the NHS will in all likelihood change and not to the doctors' advantage.
I am glad that you and your mum had good outcomes. Good news is always nice to hear.
I'm not going to name names unless the behaviour persists.
(Looking hard at one particular poster.)
Seumas Milne replied that she probably couldn't remember the 80s.
PB sometimes gets blocked as being a bit too racy.
If you think that occurs without world class administration, you are not really suitable for the job you describe above. Good news is not generally heard. At all. That's the point. The bad cases are not just the exceptions but they are tremendously rare exceptions. Indeed, I have never encountered someone who has had a significant problem in their dealings with the NHS.
The funny thing is, that for most of the sob stories, really the best outcome would be to just tell the moaners to toughen up or simply point out the very basic steps the individual could have taken to aid their own outcome.
For example, if the consultant advises you that you will get an appointment within 3 weeks and after three weeks you sit there instead of phoning them, guess that, that's YOUR fault not the NHS.
But there also has to be a complete rebalance of what is reasonable. People die. They need to accept it.
Hmmmm...
Scotland which has contained the rise in NHS costs (more or less identical to 2010 while NHS England spends 15% more) while delivering better service levels.
I suspect Lansley has much more to answer for than people already give him (dis)credit.
Here's HuffPost from earlier
https://t.co/BisVCdYbi2 https://t.co/uRzOUE2tpR
However: I bet you didn't have time to read and think about all the links on it, did you, to run through all those stages that you so proudly claim to do for all your information? No, you just went on the web and did a search. Which makes it odd that you got PrisonPlanet first, because it doesn't appear first (or near first) on searches for 'IHH' or 'IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation'
Admit it: PP is your usual reading. Which would explain a lot ...
It's also funny that you call an Alex Jones website a 'source'. ROFLMAO.
I mean, who can forget your 'theory' about the Titanic and Olympic being swapped ...
He certainly should be: dim lefty labour leader who is soft on terrorism and immigration. Plus an incoherent shadow chancellor and behind them a party terminally split.
That a large organization can spend a lot of money on a lot of staff delivering a lot of healthcare in and of itself proves nothing as to whether it is well-run or not. It tells us that it is functioning to a certain level in an environment with limited competition.
Certainly, I agree that patient expectations can be unreasonable. I do have a dog in the game in that my wife is a physician, my step-daughter intends to become a surgeon (early acceptance into GW Medical School), and her father is a physician. My mother and one sister worked in the NHS. In the US the litigation and blame cultures unreasonably expect perfect outcomes all the time. That is wrong. But it certainly does not mean that all is well in medicine either - healthcare kills far fewer than it treats, but it still kills a lot through incompetence and mistakes - witness the 100k nosocomial infection deaths per year in the US - all pretty much preventable.
The skill to improving the situation is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff amongst the complainers. Not all those who complain are wingeing, and we need to know what is going wrong so we can fix it. Trying to shut them up or telling all of them to toughen up will not help.
If you want to know my views on this in more detail, see http://www.nature.com/news/biological-research-rethink-biosafety-1.18747
The Nat onal continues its fine tradition of being spectacularly wrong at all times
You cannot run a 7 day service on 5 days of staffing (across multiple disciplines including social services, pathology, imaging, ambulances, secretarial services, pharmacy etc). To get better outcomes is everyones goal, but denuding midweek services is not the way. To pretend that it can be done without significant funding is mendacious.
I have pointed out many times the recruitment and retention crisis in British medicine. We should aim to have a contract that improves this rather than worsens it. Foundation doctors are currently applying for Specialist Training posts beginning in August. I expect vacancy rates to be higher than ever (50% posts unfilled for GP training in the East Midlands for example), except in Wales and Scotland where Hunt has no power and the old T and C's apply.
So, an operation may kill you. But it has a much higher chance of curing you, in general.
Most operations can be postponed a couple of days without much effect. So, this means that during a planned strike the number of operations goes down and so does the death rate....
"Not to be confused with the outlawed German association Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation e.V. or the Netherlands-based Internationale Humanitaire Hulporganisatie Nederland."
"That IHH was banned in Germany later turned out to be a mixup between the Turkish İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri and the banned German Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation e.V.."
"The European Commission has said that "regarding the banning of IHH Germany by the German Ministry of Interior, IHH Turkey released a statement in which it claims not to have any links to the Germany-based organisation IHH. This information is confirmed by the German Embassy in Ankara."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHH_(Turkish_NGO)
And here's the other one:
"Not to be confused with the Turkish non-governmental organization İHH İnsani Yardım Vakfı."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationale_Humanitäre_Hilfsorganisation_e.V.
Great fact checking there. Right at the top of the wiki pages ...
I don't want to defend IHH: I didn't particularly like the flotilla nonsense a few years ago. But as usual you're on one side only: Russia's.
And your so-carefully checked facts are, in fact, wrong.
Apart from my copy. Which I wasn't supposed to have....
There's no implicit difference in labelling any Labour member who doesn't support Jihadi Jez as a Blairite.
The thing is that I was not unique in this. I came across other patients and many of them were also having a bad time of it, in fact I would go so far as to say that I sailed through the process compared to most.
You must live a very sheltered existence. I could put you in touch with dozens of people who are having a hell of a time just getting initial appointments, or others who have huge waits between appointments because paperwork gets lost. I have one friend who waited over a year to get a test result.
I am not that sort of person. By week 4 I was on the phone / email / letter / whatever, but what do you do with phones that never get answered, or emails that never get replies or letters that "never arrived" even when sent Recorded Delivery?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHH_(Turkish_NGO)
Plenty of room for confusion - and deliberate confusion by a self-avered conspiracy theorist - but it seems that the one blown up was affiliated with the Turkish NGO, not the banned Dutch one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0wOypCgewc
It's the view I've expressed here myself but I'm astonished to see it so widely shared. Obviously it doesn't mean that people necessarily like what parties stand for, but perhaps it's a prerequisite for respect.
Well done for keeping the notes
That is what I was told, except I reminded them that it was my health and my body they were dealing with so kindly put that paperwork in the copier over there and I will have two copies for my file please....
However, I am just a patient seeking information, so I am grateful for your views.
In every single hospital stay, the staff have tried, but I kept finding mistakes and omissions. You get very skilled at fixing something while trying to be polite.
Quite simply the administrative and support system does not seem to work. In some hospitals it seems that the probability that a blood test will be done (first time) when ordered by a doctor is in the 80% range, for example
And does the same apply to the BMA Junior Doctors Committee?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
Cyclefree is my favourite poster this year by some distance.
Someone who paid £3 to vote in an election?
A fully paid up member?
A lifetime voter?
Have you ever met and dealt with real people?
I've never come across anyone waiting 4 years for any surgery, sounds "truthy" to me. "Required" and "4 years" don't stack up to basic reasonableness tests.
I'm sure inveterate moaners know other inveterate moaners, I'm not surprised out of the tens of million the NHS treats every years, "concern tourists" can find other like minded complainers.
Its hard to work out where you are going wrong. I know if I want to see a doctor, I lift the phone, get answered promptly, make an appointment and go and see the doctor later that or the next day. If I need to contact the hospital about my braces, I phone up, get answered promptly and seen the next day. This is for an entirely elective treatment pathway which is absolutely at the bottom of the priority food chain.
I can only reference the experience of myself, my family and everyone I know. But I know of no-one that has every had a sub-standard experience of the NHS outwith certain reasonable considerations.
One of the many things wrong with Hunts proposals is that continuity of care will be even worse than at present. This has adverse consequences for patient care, training of junior doctors and overall team working.
BTW - I came up with "Apocalypse Mao", on PB, natch
In short, perhaps people think by representing their supporters parties will win elections, so priority doesn't need to be given to the latter as it's achieved by doing the former.
They support prioritization to representing members in theory, but in practice will moan if they then lose an election. If Corbyn represents the views of the members brilliantly (as he appears to be doing given they like what he is doing), and then loses a GE in a bad way (not that there is a 'good' way, but reducing the Tory lead without becoming the largest party would probably be seen as ok), I would bet good money the members would not blame themselves for the views that saw that happen, they'd blame the leader for not doing it well enough or for not diluting it for public consumption. Or blame the public (we've seen this in part - to avoid the 'public are bastards' interpretation, I've seen Corbyn use the 'the public didn't understand' interpretation for the Tories winning).
https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/health/
At most Trusts knowledge of the DPA is a mandatory training requirement renewed annually.
I think it would be hilarious to have literally the whole 24 hours devoted to the debate, and still see STW and others dismiss it as 'only' a day of debate. Not technically an untruth at least.