Go ahead and persuade "As a Father" to adopt that in his manifesto. The man who once said he could sum up his priorities in three letters NHS.
Tim I would not pretend that Cameron yet understands what needs to happen with the English Health Service. But shining a light into the dark corners with international comparisons will help the debate.
One thought for all. Could the liability bills from all the legal claims for negligence bankrupt the Health Services across the UK? 50,000 people at £1m (comp + lawyers) each = £50 billion.
Is this going to be the reason why these Health Services will be changed?
David Bruce @davembruce “@GABaines: Labour have closed 800 hospital beds in Wales, as it cuts the NHS budget by 11% in real terms over three years.” #uklabour
The findings pile pressure on shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, who was in charge of the NHS from June 2009 to May 2010.
I think it would be in the Tories interests for the focus of pressure to be Labour as a whole and not just Andy Burnham - who was only in Health for 11 months. Fortunately, if the track on EdB is anything to go by Ed "he was right and you're all wrong" Miliband will stick by his man.....
I would not pretend that Cameron yet understands what needs to happen with the English Health Service. But shining a light into the dark corners with international comparisons will help the debate.
One thought for all. Could the liability bills from all the legal claims for negligence bankrupt the Health Services across the UK? 50,000 people at £1m (comp + lawyers) each = £50 billion.
Is this going to be the reason why these Health Services will be changed?
A few years ago [back in c2005] I was at a PR conf re public sector liabilities - the Dir of Public Affairs of one NHS Trust did a presentation on the accumulated liabilities of the NHS and it ate almost the entire budget if these were successfully prosecuted.
Now whilst that's unlikely - it does show the scale of the problem re negligence and avoidable risk as a result of poor care.
I would not pretend that Cameron yet understands what needs to happen with the English Health Service. But shining a light into the dark corners with international comparisons will help the debate.
One thought for all. Could the liability bills from all the legal claims for negligence bankrupt the Health Services across the UK? 50,000 people at £1m (comp + lawyers) each = £50 billion.
Is this going to be the reason why these Health Services will be changed?
A few years ago [back in c2005] I was at a PR conf re public sector liabilities - the Dir of Public Affairs of one NHS Trust did a presentation on the accumulated liabilities of the NHS and it ate almost the entire budget if these were successfully prosecuted.
Now whilst that's unlikely - it does show the scale of the problem re negligence and avoidable risk as a result of poor care.
The more of these reports come out the more data and facts are available for the ambulance chasing lawyers. The 4 Health Services look like a juicy target for these lawyers.
The findings pile pressure on shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, who was in charge of the NHS from June 2009 to May 2010.
I think it would be in the Tories interests for the focus of pressure to be Labour as a whole and not just Andy Burnham - who was only in Health for 11 months. Fortunately, if the track on EdB is anything to go by Ed "he was right and you're all wrong" Miliband will stick by his man.....
I think the Tories have decided to gun for Burnham because he's stupid enough to be in post now - its an easy target. If say Dougie Alexander was Shadowing, it'd be a lot harder and be a general attack on Labour. As it is - Andy's scalp is vulnerable.
It's Labour silly fault he's in this job at all. They asked for it and are getting it.
Tony Gallagher @gallaghereditor [he's at the DT] One figure that jumps out is the slump in subscribers to the (excellent) @guardian iPad edition. Down from 17,000 to 14,000. Shame.
13,000 needless deaths under Labour's watch and the Cheshire Farmer blames Cameron?!
If Burnham had any sense of decency he'd quit politics.
"13,000 needless deaths under Labour's watch"
Another ignoramous checking in.
Got any more selective immigration figures for us to laugh at?
Still, it's funny watching you desperately defending the indefensible, with Chuka and chums.
" Another ignoramous checking in "
Normally spelt ignoramus by non-ignorami.
What I genuinely don't get is that independent experts are saying THIRTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED unnecessarily - yet some appear to be entirely missing this point - many of them on the Labour benches who think its all about them instead. Boo-hoo. They aren't the victims here.
Some need a serious reality check when it comes to what matters.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of any political issue, the standard defence is always .... "let's draw a line under it and move on, let's look for solutions and that's where this (insert appropriate party) is failing, or look for minor piece of the report and say "This is where we need to focus and this clearly shows (insert a load of twaddle)."
It's all so predictable. A bit like Jack the Ripper coming up with. "That was all in the past, society has moved on and we now need to focus on the police. Their methods are making things worse. I've told them where they are going wrong and it's all down to them."
Interviewers need to pin down who knew what, when and what, if anything, they did about it.
What I genuinely don't get is that independent experts are saying THIRTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED unnecessarily
That is not what they are saying (even if that is the figure that finally emerges after days of spinning). Unless and until you figure out what they are saying wouldnt it be better to listen and learn rather than comment?
Not really old chap - being a selfish rightie I want a strong pound to coincide with my holiday to Euroland - dam that Carney..
Seen todays energy price rise forecasts?
Crossing my fingers for a nice Eurozone crisis in the next month - that could help the pound
The only energy costs on my mind will be charcoal prices in Leclercs...
What, you aren't on holiday yet? And it seems like only yesterday Charles was telling us all polling should be ignored because Eton had shut for the summer. Or was that Sunday when the tories had four bad polls in the papers?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of any political issue, the standard defence is always .... "let's draw a line under it and move on, let's look for solutions and that's where this (insert appropriate party) is failing, or look for minor piece of the report and say "This is where we need to focus and this clearly shows (insert a load of twaddle)."
It's all so predictable. A bit like Jack the Ripper coming up with. "That was all in the past, society has moved on and we now need to focus on the police. Their methods are making things worse. I've told them where they are going wrong and it's all down to them."
Interviewers need to pin down who knew what, when and what, if anything, they did about it.
Precisely. Well said, Sir. This applies to every walk of life - we were treated to several hours at the recent PAC into BBC pay-offs by the Dir of HR who tried to slopey-shoulder it all onto everyone else despite being in post during the entire period.
Do they think we're stupid? I had to give Mrs Hodge 10/10 for calling her out on it 'blaming people who aren't in the room'
What I genuinely don't get is that independent experts are saying THIRTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED unnecessarily
That is not what they are saying (even if that is the figure that finally emerges after days of spinning). Unless and until you figure out what they are saying wouldnt it be better to listen and learn rather than comment?
Well, given you're an expert - what are 13000 unnecessary deaths in your book? 13k who didn't die? The figures are from Prof Jarmann - he said on BBC24 today it was 13300.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
"And the response is not to aknowledge the serious failings of the NHS, it is to see polling advantage ."
It seems you haven't yet understood what this site is about. The clue is in the title.
Plenty of chat rooms about....
@FoxinSox: as someone whose viewpoint on the NHS I respect, have you read Ben Goldacre's rather worrying book ''Bad Pharma" ? I've recently re-read it, and my blood is boiling.
For those who have not read it, Goldacre describes the way the pharmaceutical industry plays fast and loose with the scientific process and patients, and the way many doctors are complicit.
The problem I have is that I just cannot believe it. I cannot believe that governments all over the world have laid on their backs and allowed themselves to be utterly shafted by the companies, and that thousands (hundreds of?) have been complicit in the game. That patients die because of it.
Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions. But instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits by design. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data is simply buried. All of this is perfectly legal. In fact, even government regulators withhold vitally important data from the people who need it most. Doctors and patient groups have stood by too, and failed to protect us. Instead, they take money and favours, in a world so fractured that medics and nurses are now educated by the drugs industry.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong to say that 13300 more people died than should in these NHS hospitals.
I'm lost as to your point - did 13300 more people not die? Prof Jarmann thinks they did based on his expertise in mortality statistics.
That we don't have the names of these 13300 doesn't make them Non-Persons.
Of course the answer to the problems of the NHS is the one that the left will accept over its dead body - change it to a funding and governance organisation but with a significant element of delivery by the market. A giant socialised service provider will always be as we are now.
Other countries like France, Germany, Sweden have better health systems than ours precisely because the provision of service has market elements to it. I strongly suspect that all these 'NHS sucks' emerging stories will take us towards that realisation.
Save the NHS - but let it buy services from a market. Not rocket science.
As I predicted first thing tim posting like crazy - hurling insults at other posters - he needs help - which of the 14 trusts should we send him to anybody???
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
A *larger economy* than where? I've less idea now what the SNP stand for than ever. That *we'll be in the UK* statement left me wondering Eh? So what is independence then?
An attempt to blame the problems of specific hospitals on a particular former Minister isn't going to seize public attention.
That's not the criticism. No one is blaming Andy Burnham for the original specific problems; the criticism is that he, or Labour in general, covered up the problems once they had been flagged, for party-political reasons.
The reason why this is causing such panic at the top of the Labour Party is of course very simple: they know they are vulnerable to the charges of spin and that they fostered a culture of bureaucratic box-ticking which ignored patients' needs.
WE HAVEN"T SEEN THE REPORT YET JUST HUNT'S SELECTIVE LEAKING.
I suggest you wait and see, because if this is the central finding
norman smith @BBCNormanS Sir Bruce Keogh report will point to high correlation between hospital staff ratio and high HSMR (morality rates.)
Then Hunt is in trouble.
That's rather an amusing typo... ;-)
(my bolding)
Well spotted.
Are you urging us to ignore ICM as Eton has broken up for Summer, as you were urging us to ignore the polls on Sunday?
My view on ICM - as posted last night - is that it's probably a rogue, but that it might cause some palpitations in the shadow cabinet.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
I do hope we get a thread to discuss the Keogh report when it is finally published - and we can read what it actually says and not what those, partis pris on both sides, would like it to say........
We have a brand new hospital built right by us. It came with new roads, new council offices (inevitably) and lots of money spent.
The new hospital was communicated through the local Labour MP and local Labour-run council as an ABSOLUTELY FECKING GREAT THING. After all, it's a new hospital. Isn't that just marvellous? And in many respects I suppose it is, and you can't blame Labour for capitalising politically from it. There was no obvious attempt to explain what it was for, what it would do, how it would provide care.
It was built to replace an old hospital which had A&E. Then when the new one opened amid much fanfare, we all discovered it had no A&E, so people were (and are) really pissed off. There is a big local campaign underway arguing for an A&E department, causing some political bother. The nearest A&E is now about 15 miles away.
Despite the lack of A&E it has very good facilities for things like dementia, and good recuperation depts for old people recovering from nasty illnesses/ops. I know this through personal experience with my grandparents. It is also very, very plush inside. Looks the dogs; fair play.
But we weren't told about the lack of A&E or great dementia facilities etc when it was being conceived and built. It was just NEW HOSPITAL. FECKING GREAT.
I suppose my point is that most people know the NHS isn't perfect. Most of us are bright enough to know that our old relatives will likely - at some point - go in and sadly not come back out. We also know that things go wrong. But the cover-ups and incidents like the tormenting of that Bailey(?) woman just disgust me. The NHS is for us, not for the people who run it. They'd do well to remember that. When you go private you certainly feel like you are a valued customer.
A bit of cross party consensus over the NHS would be welcome. How we are going to fund it, how we will deal with people living longer and how we can save more lives. It's certainly in all our interests. Watching the Tory and Labour arse-covering operations in overdrive when people have died needlessly isn't particularly edifying.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
@Charles That it has an appalling reputation is nothing to do with money but competence. The excuse that the NHS exists on some shoestring of goodwill that exists nowhere else, and all their staff are selfless saints is nonsense. It employs over 1m people - they are no different to any large organisation.
The idea that one entity employs one million people is something more akin to an East European socialist state. Anyone remember what happened when the soviets nationalised their farms? Millions starved to death.
I doubt the 1.9 million employees of MacDonalds will be starving to death any time soon, and the NHS is probably OK too. If there's going to be mass starvation in any large, east-european-socialist-state-like organization, I reckon the most likely one is Walmart.
I strongly suspect that all these 'NHS sucks' emerging stories will take us towards that realisation.
Why don't we give France a USD108bn contract to manage the NHS for us? In return we might even get some movement on the CAP.
They are good at this sort of thing....
TBH, I just want the NHS to be treated as any other body - to be open to justified criticism and to rectify it. It's an enormous bureaucracy full of the same failings as any other.
It's not populated by saints, but people who are as flawed as the rest of us. The sooner we deal with it on this basis the better AFAIC.
Many of the skeletons falling en masse from cupboards is precisely because of its decades long sacred cow status. The Catholic Church saw in spades what happens when an institution is given a free pass.
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
A *larger economy* than where? I've less idea now what the SNP stand for than ever. That *we'll be in the UK* statement left me wondering Eh? So what is independence then?
Salmond is comparing Scotland to the Isle of Man. It seems that his idea of independence is for Scotland to become a mainland Isle of Man , Jersey , Guernsey or Sark.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
The only person with zero out of 10 credibility on this subject is yourself . The implication of your constant shrieking posts is that the reports are saying that 13,000 or so people would be alive today were it not for serious failings in these 14 hospitals . This is manifestly false . We would need to go through all these 13,000 odd cases in detail individually but I suspect that in the vast majority the patients involved were already critically ill and the statistics are showing that on average they lived for a shorter period of time than expected .
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
A *larger economy* than where? I've less idea now what the SNP stand for than ever. That *we'll be in the UK* statement left me wondering Eh? So what is independence then?
Salmond is comparing Scotland to the Isle of Man. It seems that his idea of independence is for Scotland to become a mainland Isle of Man , Jersey , Guernsey or Sark.
You're kidding - the Isle of Man? Well there's a low bar to jump.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Neil, out of interest, do you work for the Department of Health?
F1: Williams toss previous chief technical officer and hire a new one (who was banned for 5 years for his role in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix) with immediate effect: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23327416
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
Plato, excess mortality rates can't just be translated into "more deaths" vs the average.
The 13,300 number is how many fewer deaths would have occured if these trusts had performed *exactly in line with the average*. Of course that is an artificial benchmark generated by statistics.
What mortality rates should be used for are as a warning system:
1. If they are higher than the benchmark then what is wrong. Is it because of the patient mix, bad luck or is there something wrong with the system or the staff? It should be a prompt for a more detailed review
2. If they are lower than the benchmark then it should be a case of why - what (if anything) is the hospital doing right and is there anything that can be done to transfer those learnings to other facilities.
They are a tool, nothing more. It's overly simplistic to use them otherwise.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Neil, out of interest, do you work for the Department of Health?
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
The only person with zero out of 10 credibility on this subject is yourself . The implication of your constant shrieking posts is that the reports are saying that 13,000 or so people would be alive today were it not for serious failings in these 14 hospitals . This is manifestly false . We would need to go through all these 13,000 odd cases in detail individually but I suspect that in the vast majority the patients involved were already critically ill and the statistics are showing that on average they lived for a shorter period of time than expected .
So these people who were *excess deaths* would've died anyway according to your inexpert view. Well we all die eventually. But Prof Jarmann disagrees.
Yet again - its your opinion. Find another of equal stature who disagrees with his conclusion that 13300 real people didn't die when they could've lived with better care.
Until you do - I'll believe the resident expert on the subject. He has no political axe to grind.
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
A *larger economy* than where? I've less idea now what the SNP stand for than ever. That *we'll be in the UK* statement left me wondering Eh? So what is independence then?
Salmond is comparing Scotland to the Isle of Man. It seems that his idea of independence is for Scotland to become a mainland Isle of Man , Jersey , Guernsey or Sark.
You're kidding - the Isle of Man? Well there's a low bar to jump.
Salmond's increasingly losing the plot, how a small tax haven is the currency model for a state of 5 million just beggars belief.
The Guardian makes the point that mortality rates at ALL hospitals have plummeted in the last 10 years. In that sense, the 13,000 figure concerns hospitals where death rates have fallen less than in the rest of the country.
Jarman will make the point that death rates is not a particularly good way of measuring hospital performance.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
Plato, excess mortality rates can't just be translated into "more deaths" vs the average.
The 13,300 number is how many fewer deaths would have occured if these trusts had performed *exactly in line with the average*. Of course that is an artificial benchmark generated by statistics.
What mortality rates should be used for are as a warning system:
1. If they are higher than the benchmark then what is wrong. Is it because of the patient mix, bad luck or is there something wrong with the system or the staff? It should be a prompt for a more detailed review
2. If they are lower than the benchmark then it should be a case of why - what (if anything) is the hospital doing right and is there anything that can be done to transfer those learnings to other facilities.
They are a tool, nothing more. It's overly simplistic to use them otherwise.
Exactly correct , a perfectly explained post which I would give a like to if I could .
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
The only person with zero out of 10 credibility on this subject is yourself . The implication of your constant shrieking posts is that the reports are saying that 13,000 or so people would be alive today were it not for serious failings in these 14 hospitals . This is manifestly false . We would need to go through all these 13,000 odd cases in detail individually but I suspect that in the vast majority the patients involved were already critically ill and the statistics are showing that on average they lived for a shorter period of time than expected .
So these people who were *excess deaths* would've died anyway according to your inexpert view. Well we all die eventually. But Prof Jarmann disagrees.
Yet again - its your opinion. Find another of equal stature who disagrees with his conclusion that 13300 real people didn't die when they could've lived with better care.
Until you do - I'll believe the resident expert on the subject. He has no political axe to grind.
See Charles' post which puts my point in a better and more detailed way . You are simply wrong , wrong and wrong in your interpretations and postings on this subject .
"Of course Labour's numbers are down: the public don't trust Ed and Ukip is collapsing"
"There is one other thing all the polls agree on: Ed Miliband is crap. Or rather, the British people do not think he has what it takes to be Prime Minister, which in politics amounts to the same thing. Perceptions about Miliband are now set in stone. He could deport Len McCluskey, introduce hanging for shoplifters and personally lead an audacious commando raid to overthrow Kim Jong-un. And people would still see him as weak and indecisive."
These arguments are very similar to those had in the summer of 2010 regarding austerity.
3 years later the polls are clear who won the argument.
This has the feel of a seachange on the NHS - but not a quick one.
Cons should have been on this 12-18 months ago.
I disagree - when PBers like me poured scorn on the Danny Boyle fest of the OC we were vilified on PB and some have continued to flog this old horse as some evidence that we were wrong.
Given the slew of appalling evidence that the NHS isn't just imperfect but seriously flawed - some still seek to pretend its all nothing but fuss and nonsense.
I take a different view - if there's problems, fix them - don't be too scared to say the baby is ugly, though there is something very wrong with it.
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
Richard, could you read something on an equal relationship signed in 1707 which misses the bleeding obvous.... Why can Isle of Man (outside UK) have an arrangement with the pound and Scotland cannot. Is it because they do not have nuclear weapons and oil? Confirm Scotland has every right as an owner of the pound to do what they want and we might finally make progress with some of you southern Neanderthals.... Just kidding I think.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
The only person with zero out of 10 credibility on this subject is yourself . The implication of your constant shrieking posts is that the reports are saying that 13,000 or so people would be alive today were it not for serious failings in these 14 hospitals . This is manifestly false . We would need to go through all these 13,000 odd cases in detail individually but I suspect that in the vast majority the patients involved were already critically ill and the statistics are showing that on average they lived for a shorter period of time than expected .
So these people who were *excess deaths* would've died anyway according to your inexpert view. Well we all die eventually. But Prof Jarmann disagrees.
Yet again - its your opinion. Find another of equal stature who disagrees with his conclusion that 13300 real people didn't die when they could've lived with better care.
Until you do - I'll believe the resident expert on the subject. He has no political axe to grind.
See Charles' post which puts my point in a better and more detailed way . You are simply wrong , wrong and wrong in your interpretations and postings on this subject .
And if Prof Jarmann was as complacent as you - he wouldn't be all over the media saying otherwise.
Waving away the deaths of 13300 people who didn't need to die cuts no ice with me or the vast majority of the population.
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
I'm not contradicting him. I'm contradicting you because after days of posting about this you are *still* unable to understand what he is saying properly.
Then enlighten me and PB where Prof is wrong
There's only so many ways that I can say I don't think he's wrong, I think you are.
And yet again you pull this stunt of bitching about another but not actually backing up your own assertion. It's really very transparent along with ignoring perfectly reasonable questions that you choose not to reply to.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
Plato, excess mortality rates can't just be translated into "more deaths" vs the average.
The 13,300 number is how many fewer deaths would have occured if these trusts had performed *exactly in line with the average*. Of course that is an artificial benchmark generated by statistics.
What mortality rates should be used for are as a warning system:
1. If they are higher than the benchmark then what is wrong. Is it because of the patient mix, bad luck or is there something wrong with the system or the staff? It should be a prompt for a more detailed review
2. If they are lower than the benchmark then it should be a case of why - what (if anything) is the hospital doing right and is there anything that can be done to transfer those learnings to other facilities.
They are a tool, nothing more. It's overly simplistic to use them otherwise.
That's exactly right IMO, and a reasonable basis for cross-party discussion.
These arguments are very similar to those had in the summer of 2010 regarding austerity.
3 years later the polls are clear who won the argument.
This has the feel of a seachange on the NHS - but not a quick one.
Cons should have been on this 12-18 months ago.
I disagree - when PBers like me poured scorn on the Danny Boyle fest of the OC we were vilified on PB and some have continued to flog this old horse as some evidence that we were wrong.
Given the slew of appalling evidence that the NHS isn't just imperfect but seriously flawed - some still seek to pretend its all nothing but fuss and nonsense.
I take a different view - if there's problems, fix them - don't be too scared to say the baby is ugly, though there is something very wrong with it.
Newsnight had the Danny Boyle pyjama party clip playing last night - even Kirsty Wark was suggesting in hindsight it was ill judged.
These arguments are very similar to those had in the summer of 2010 regarding austerity.
3 years later the polls are clear who won the argument.
This has the feel of a seachange on the NHS - but not a quick one.
Cons should have been on this 12-18 months ago.
I disagree - when PBers like me poured scorn on the Danny Boyle fest of the OC we were vilified on PB and some have continued to flog this old horse as some evidence that we were wrong.
Given the slew of appalling evidence that the NHS isn't just imperfect but seriously flawed - some still seek to pretend its all nothing but fuss and nonsense.
I take a different view - if there's problems, fix them - don't be too scared to say the baby is ugly, though there is something very wrong with it.
Newsnight had the Danny Boyle pyjama party clip playing last night - even Kirsty Wark was suggesting in hindsight it was ill judged.
I will watch NNight - it has had several commendations on PB.
"Allowing Andy Burnham to remain in charge of Labour's health brief may prove to be one of Ed Miliband's biggest strategic blunders. Today we are finding out why. The shadow health secretary has so far appeared on ITV's Daybreak, BBC Breakfast and the Today programme – and in each appearance he tried, in desperation, to turn the public's ire about the NHS crisis (specifically in relation to the Keogh Review of 14 NHS trusts) towards the Tories."
"Perhaps worst of all for Burnham, Professor Sir Brian Jarman, one of Sir Bruce Keogh's advisers, says he warned health officials about high death rates for a decade. "My view is that there was political pressure for the information to be ignored and had been ignored at least since 2001," he told BBC Breakfast earlier. "I actually sent the data to Andy Burnham in March 2010 and seven of the hospitals in the 14 were among the ones that I sent him." And the result? “Effectively nothing happened,” says Prof Jarman."
7 of the 14 Keogh review trusts have cut 1117 nursing posts.
Even I'm prepared to accept that labour have a stronger case here than might at first seem apparent.
What is hammering labour is a total refusal to accept that ANYTHING went wrong on their watch. That is clearly complete and utter rubbish.
It's also a question of attitude. Labour are clearly piqued that anybody has the brazen effrontery to criticise them on the NHS.
If labour had started by saying yes there were mistakes but we believe the NHS is way better than it was under the tories, they might be in a better position.
Keogh's report will say: "However tempting it may be, it is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths."
I come back after two hours and unbelievably, there are people still trying to flog this dead horse.
Why can Isle of Man (outside UK) have an arrangement with the pound and Scotland cannot. Is it because they do not have nuclear weapons and oil?
The Isle of Man issues its own currency which they peg to the pound. Scotland could do that, or at least it could try to do that, but it's difficult to keep the exchange rate locked in, and anyway Salmond seems to have rejected that idea. Essentially these are the options:
1) Issue your own currency, let it float against the pound (probably with some central bank intervention to dampen down volatility in the exchange rate).
2) Issue your own currency, try to peg it to the pound.
3) Use the pound, but without any say in monetary policy since it would be a foreign country's currency.
4) Adopt the Euro, although it's unclear how you get there since the accession method involves having your own currency and gradually locking it to the Euro through ERM. That rules it out in the short term.
The first three options are perfectly practical, although 2 and 3 don't give you much flexibility and 2 runs the risk that the markets move against you making the peg unsustainable. Option 1 of course has the disadvantage of foreign-exchange risk and costs for the the huge amount of trade with the rest of the UK.
On balance, I'd have thought 3 was the best option, at least to start with, but you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking it's a currency union. It's not, it's using a foreign country's currency.
7 of the 14 Keogh review trusts have cut 1117 nursing posts.
Even I'm prepared to accept that labour have a stronger case here than might at first seem apparent.
What is hammering labour is a total refusal to accept that ANYTHING went wrong on their watch. That is clearly complete and utter rubbish.
It's also a question of attitude. Labour are clearly piqued that anybody has the brazen effrontery to criticise them on the NHS.
If labour had started by saying yes there were mistakes but we believe the NHS is way better than it was under the tories, they might be in a better position.
And most of the Trusts have improved their performance re mortality rates since they were exposed as failing.
It's not about How Many but How Well. Using manning stats is like arguing BT was better in 1990 than 2005.
Alex Salmond really does live in fantasy land, or maybe he knows his bluff won't be called by the Scottish people:
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
Richard, could you read something on an equal relationship signed in 1707 which misses the bleeding obvous.... Why can Isle of Man (outside UK) have an arrangement with the pound and Scotland cannot. Is it because they do not have nuclear weapons and oil? Confirm Scotland has every right as an owner of the pound to do what they want and we might finally make progress with some of you southern Neanderthals.... Just kidding I think.
I think we're beginning to see the outlines of Salmond's dream for Scotland. A tax haven for the super rich where Life President Alexander the First can play endless rounds of golf with his adoring billionaire fan club.
On another place, a kind Labour member confirmed, checking membersnet, that Labour target seats where the selection have not started yet are
Bradford East Dewsbury Brent Central Brentford & Isleworth Dundee East Keighley Harrow East Ealing Central & Acton Carmarthen East & Dinefwr Cleethorpes Ilford North Brigg & Goole (+ Bradford West which wasn't in the original target list)
So it’s London and Yorkshire that are the regions behind.
No one who has watched his career expects Hunt to understand this stuff, but people around him will have known what they were doing.
Anybody who can put labour on the back foot on their number one issue surely deserves some credit.
Labour has killed their own Golden Goose - the NHS was their banker policy area. Now Joe Public is understandably suspicious about performance data and care.
Just looking through the Guardian results. Some pretty bad figures hidden in there. Yes, cash increased by a huge amount, but it was achieved by selling subsidiaries and a big decrease in non-current assets, though that was offset by a favourable valuation of their ~30% stake in Emap.
The Guardian as a newspaper is dead, iPhone subscribers are down to 57k, iPad subscriptions are barely rising. They are relying more heavily on advertising income and after their whole digital push, they still only derive 28% of their revenue from digital operations, that's just sad. I've seen snails move faster tbh.
Some would say they brought it on themselves by lambasting NI for sticking up a paywall as that perpetuated the sense of entitlement their readers had to free news media access which in turn has made it much harder for them to convert their readers into paying subscribers for the iPhone and iPad apps. They also haven't got a coherent strategy to roll out on Android with proper paid subscriptions either, and Android now holds 60% of market share for smartphones in the UK. The Guardian's obsession with Apple and iPhone is now hurting them financially.
All in all, there is a path out for them, but they need to be more aggressive and put up a paywall like the Telegraph, limited free access, paid subscription for full access as that would still allow them to maintain some relevancy on the internet and keep advertising revenues up unlike the Times which, for a long time, went under the radar after their paywall went up.
Compared to the Times which last I had heard crossed 120,000 paying subscribers with ARPS at ~ £130. What's more is that the paywalls at both the Times and Telegraph is working to slow the descent of newspaper sales, the former is down by just 2.3% and the latter is down by just 4.6% YoY. The Guardian, who don't have a paywall for the main website have sales down by 11.6% YoY.
Interesting times for news media in the UK. I think by the end of the year it will just be the BBC and Daily Mail that remain free for unlimited reading (I think the BBC may even put up a paywall for non UK visitors given the heavy cost burden it has for them).
"The report into unusually high death rates at 14 hospitals is to reject claims that the hospitals investigated have between them killed thousands of patients through poor care.
The review by the NHS medical director, Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, will dismiss the two mortality indicators that were used to justify the probe into the 14, which was launched on the day Robert Francis QC published his damning report into the Mid-Staffordshire care scandal.
Keogh's report will say: "However tempting it may be, it is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths.""
Jeremy Hunt should read that and explain who has been briefing the press about 13,000 deaths.
No one who has watched his career expects Hunt to understand this stuff, but people around him will have known what they were doing.
The Guardian is pretty sloppy with its reporting though. Keogh isn't dismissing the mortality indicators. Just saying they shouldn't be misused.
"Since ICM started doing polls for the Guardian in 1984, only once has an opposition actually improved on its share of the vote at this point in the electoral cycle, and that was from such a subterranean level during William Hague’s leadership that there really was only one way for the Tory vote to go. The simple fact is that, whatever Labour’s relative CM poll rating is today, it is virtually certain to be lower – and probably much lower – in two years time.
Another thing all the polls are telling us is Ed Miliband and Labour are going backwards. At the turn of the year, double-digit Labour poll leads were the norm. Today, they are the exception.
That’s not what’s supposed to be happening. The 50p tax rate has come into effect. So has the bedroom tax. And the benefit cap. The squeeze on living standards is continuing. The NHS reforms are being implemented. More public service cuts have been unveiled. This should be the time for Labour to be driving ever deeper into enemy territory. Instead, they are in retreat.
No one who has watched his career expects Hunt to understand this stuff, but people around him will have known what they were doing.
Anybody who can put labour on the back foot on their number one issue surely deserves some credit.
The question is whether Ed Miliband will be bold and shameless enough to write off the tiny, unrepresentative minority of voters who understand statistics and pick up the ball and run with it himself. Under the Tories nearly half the hospitals are below average. Meanwhile, since the government's NHS reforms Britain's mortality rate has been at a staggering 100%, exactly the same as North Korea.
Assuming the 13k dead number is not entirely true - is its creation and use in any way different from the machine politics, lies, spin and finger pointing to which Labour subjected the Tories for 13 years? Go Dave!
Under the Tories nearly half the hospitals are below average. Meanwhile, since the government's NHS reforms Britain's mortality rate has been at a staggering 100%, exactly the same as North Korea.
Waving away the deaths of 13300 people who didn't need to die cuts no ice with me or the vast majority of the population.
With respect Plato,
13300 people who didn't need to die, didn't die.
So why is this being said by Prof Jarmann - who are these non-patients who were admitted, given a death X in the box by their Trust? Are they imaginary patients?
Go on - explain this? I'm all ears. I've seen several posts rubbishing what the leading expert on mortality deaths says - but nothing to refute it.
Assuming the 13k dead number is not entirely true - is its creation and use in any way different from the machine politics, lies, spin and finger pointing to which Labour subjected the Tories for 13 years? Go Dave!
Labour and it's online lickspittles don't like being played at their own game.
No one who has watched his career expects Hunt to understand this stuff, but people around him will have known what they were doing.
Anybody who can put labour on the back foot on their number one issue surely deserves some credit.
The question is whether Ed Miliband will be bold and shameless enough to write off the tiny, unrepresentative minority of voters who understand statistics and pick up the ball and run with it himself. Under the Tories nearly half the hospitals are below average. Meanwhile, since the government's NHS reforms Britain's mortality rate has been at a staggering 100%, exactly the same as North Korea.
So how exactly do the mortality figures show there were no excess deaths? Or are you saying that because it is unlikely to be exactly 13,300 it somehow doesn't matter?
I dunno why Tim is risking his health on this topic - apparently the NHS was safe in 'burnem's' hands and Labour's polling is improving - so why is he posting like a demented ferret on a site which 99.9% of jo public have never heard of. He needs urgent medical care - send him to Tameside pre-2010 - they'll see to him all right.
Todays poll says Labour have improved their polling since Jeremy Chum or someone near him invented 13,000 deaths.
Quite. What's Burnham getting so agitated about?
The fact that Hunt or someone near him has invented 13,000 deaths and tried to blame him for covering them up I'd imagine.
It's like Osborne inventing the Libor conspiracy involving Ed Balls.
tim quit griping.
Burnham has been a terrible choice as Sh Sec because he's too implicated in the past. I had that discussion with you a few months back and you said Labour were right to tough it out; Ed wouldn't be taking the flak if he'd moved him back then - Burnham is damaged goods. And EdM is taking the same risk with Balls on the economy.
Real people with loved ones never existed. They are *statistics* and therefore didn't die and everything is fine.
If this is the case - why is there an enormous scandal about it? All these relatives are clearly imaging things.
You will not find a single person arguing that strawman. On the other hand, your misuse of statistics has been explained to you by posters ranging from @Charles on the right to @tim on the left. Either you are being wilfully blind or are involuntarily stupid.
Real people with loved ones never existed. They are *statistics* and therefore didn't die and everything is fine.
If this is the case - why is there an enormous scandal about it? All these relatives are clearly imaging things.
You will not find a single person arguing that strawman. On the other hand, your misuse of statistics has been explained to you by posters ranging from @Charles on the right to @tim on the left. Either you are being wilfully blind or are involuntarily stupid.
And as I've asked - if any PBer can suggest an alternative expert to Prof Jarmann feel free.
I'm quite happy to accept what he says. I'm not an expert - and neither are you or others you've cited. I'm also not reduced to insulting you as stupid - merely arrogant - game over.
Waving away the deaths of 13300 people who didn't need to die cuts no ice with me or the vast majority of the population.
With respect Plato,
13300 people who didn't need to die, didn't die.
So why is this being said by Prof Jarmann - who are these non-patients who were admitted, given a death X in the box by their Trust? Are they imaginary patients?
Go on - explain this? I'm all ears. I've seen several posts rubbishing what the leading expert on mortality deaths says - but nothing to refute it.
Plato, all the statistics tell us is that death rates, were higher on these hospitals than average.
They don't tell us why they were higher.
It may be that some of the deaths were avoidable. But it may also be that the deaths were not avoidable. (For instance, certain specialist units have higher death rates because they take on the worst cases - but it doesn't mean we should abolish them).
We *simply do not know* from these statistics whether there is a systemic problem or not.
All we can tell is that we need to look a heck of a lot closer.
The issue isn't whether Blogshire DH had excess mortality (defined statistically) in one particular year. It's whether this was a consistent finding year on year and whether it was due to preventable problems regarding care.
Politically, if the answer to all these questions was yes, then were these figures ignored or suppressed because of political convenience? I'd sort of assumed this was the case but then I'm very cynical about politicians.
Waving away the deaths of 13300 people who didn't need to die cuts no ice with me or the vast majority of the population.
With respect Plato,
13300 people who didn't need to die, didn't die.
So why is this being said by Prof Jarmann - who are these non-patients who were admitted, given a death X in the box by their Trust? Are they imaginary patients?
Go on - explain this? I'm all ears. I've seen several posts rubbishing what the leading expert on mortality deaths says - but nothing to refute it.
Plato, all the statistics tell us is that death rates, were higher on these hospitals than average.
They don't tell us why they were higher.
It may be that some of the deaths were avoidable. But it may also be that the deaths were not avoidable. (For instance, certain specialist units have higher death rates because they take on the worst cases - but it doesn't mean we should abolish them).
We *simply do not know* from these statistics whether there is a systemic problem or not.
All we can tell is that we need to look a heck of a lot closer.
No - you're assuming that Prof Jarmann who is the expert doesn't take such thing into account. Clearly he does as he's the leading expert in mortality rates.
This is so blindingly obvious that I wonder why this debate is still going on.
Real people with loved ones never existed. They are *statistics* and therefore didn't die and everything is fine.
If this is the case - why is there an enormous scandal about it? All these relatives are clearly imaging things.
You will not find a single person arguing that strawman. On the other hand, your misuse of statistics has been explained to you by posters ranging from @Charles on the right to @tim on the left. Either you are being wilfully blind or are involuntarily stupid.
And as I've asked - if any PBer can suggest an alternative expert to Prof Jarmann feel free.
I'm quite happy to accept what he says. I'm not an expert - and neither are you or others you've cited. I'm also not reduced to insulting you as stupid - merely arrogant - game over.
How about this: from Brian Keogh:
"However tempting it may be, it is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths."
Comments
One thought for all. Could the liability bills from all the legal claims for negligence bankrupt the Health Services across the UK?
50,000 people at £1m (comp + lawyers) each = £50 billion.
Is this going to be the reason why these Health Services will be changed?
“@GABaines: Labour have closed 800 hospital beds in Wales, as it cuts the NHS budget by 11% in real terms over three years.” #uklabour
Any chance you can continue this fascinating discussion by private message?
If Burnham had any sense of decency he'd quit politics.
Now whilst that's unlikely - it does show the scale of the problem re negligence and avoidable risk as a result of poor care.
Property Spotter @PropertySpot
To be fair Labour promised to save the NHS, not the patients. @MrHarryCole @PlatoSays @GuidoFawkes
It's Labour silly fault he's in this job at all. They asked for it and are getting it.
One figure that jumps out is the slump in subscribers to the (excellent) @guardian iPad edition. Down from 17,000 to 14,000. Shame.
Still, it's funny watching you desperately defending the indefensible, with Chuka and chums.
As I said earlier, whoever told him to do this mediafest isn't his friend.
Normally spelt ignoramus by non-ignorami.
Some need a serious reality check when it comes to what matters.
I have explained my vested interests viz-a-vis the NHS. Would you like to disclose your...?
It's all so predictable. A bit like Jack the Ripper coming up with. "That was all in the past, society has moved on and we now need to focus on the police. Their methods are making things worse. I've told them where they are going wrong and it's all down to them."
Interviewers need to pin down who knew what, when and what, if anything, they did about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKjeTadGPgY
I asked *if* it could have had an effect.
Do they think we're stupid? I had to give Mrs Hodge 10/10 for calling her out on it 'blaming people who aren't in the room'
Off you go - find someone as credible as Prof Jarmann and then perhaps you can contradict him.
For those who have not read it, Goldacre describes the way the pharmaceutical industry plays fast and loose with the scientific process and patients, and the way many doctors are complicit.
The problem I have is that I just cannot believe it. I cannot believe that governments all over the world have laid on their backs and allowed themselves to be utterly shafted by the companies, and that thousands (hundreds of?) have been complicit in the game. That patients die because of it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Pharma-companies-mislead-patients/dp/0007350740
It seems that not just parts of the NHS are broken ...
I'm lost as to your point - did 13300 more people not die? Prof Jarmann thinks they did based on his expertise in mortality statistics.
That we don't have the names of these 13300 doesn't make them Non-Persons.
Other countries like France, Germany, Sweden have better health systems than ours precisely because the provision of service has market elements to it. I strongly suspect that all these 'NHS sucks' emerging stories will take us towards that realisation.
Save the NHS - but let it buy services from a market. Not rocket science.
"For Scotland - a larger economy - we will retain the pound. We would use our sovereignty to negotiate for a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Scottish bank notes would remain in the same way they do now."
Yeah, right. It's a novel idea that you can 'use your sovereignty' to demand something from another country. Of course any UK government would tell him where to stuff his sovereignty: they're hardly going to let an independent country print a currency guaranteed by the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-23326569
The new hospital was communicated through the local Labour MP and local Labour-run council as an ABSOLUTELY FECKING GREAT THING. After all, it's a new hospital. Isn't that just marvellous? And in many respects I suppose it is, and you can't blame Labour for capitalising politically from it. There was no obvious attempt to explain what it was for, what it would do, how it would provide care.
It was built to replace an old hospital which had A&E. Then when the new one opened amid much fanfare, we all discovered it had no A&E, so people were (and are) really pissed off. There is a big local campaign underway arguing for an A&E department, causing some political bother. The nearest A&E is now about 15 miles away.
Despite the lack of A&E it has very good facilities for things like dementia, and good recuperation depts for old people recovering from nasty illnesses/ops. I know this through personal experience with my grandparents. It is also very, very plush inside. Looks the dogs; fair play.
But we weren't told about the lack of A&E or great dementia facilities etc when it was being conceived and built. It was just NEW HOSPITAL. FECKING GREAT.
I suppose my point is that most people know the NHS isn't perfect. Most of us are bright enough to know that our old relatives will likely - at some point - go in and sadly not come back out. We also know that things go wrong. But the cover-ups and incidents like the tormenting of that Bailey(?) woman just disgust me. The NHS is for us, not for the people who run it. They'd do well to remember that. When you go private you certainly feel like you are a valued customer.
A bit of cross party consensus over the NHS would be welcome. How we are going to fund it, how we will deal with people living longer and how we can save more lives. It's certainly in all our interests. Watching the Tory and Labour arse-covering operations in overdrive when people have died needlessly isn't particularly edifying.
0/10 for credibility on this subject.
@BBCNormanS
No 10 reject expected criticism in Keogh report over staffing levels - 8000 more clinical staff now employed in NHS
Why don't we give France a USD108bn contract to manage the NHS for us? In return we might even get some movement on the CAP.
They are good at this sort of thing....
It's not populated by saints, but people who are as flawed as the rest of us. The sooner we deal with it on this basis the better AFAIC.
Many of the skeletons falling en masse from cupboards is precisely because of its decades long sacred cow status. The Catholic Church saw in spades what happens when an institution is given a free pass.
This is manifestly false . We would need to go through all these 13,000 odd cases in detail individually but I suspect that in the vast majority the patients involved were already critically ill and the statistics are showing that on average they lived for a shorter period of time than expected .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23327416
3 years later the polls are clear who won the argument.
This has the feel of a seachange on the NHS - but not a quick one.
Cons should have been on this 12-18 months ago.
The 13,300 number is how many fewer deaths would have occured if these trusts had performed *exactly in line with the average*. Of course that is an artificial benchmark generated by statistics.
What mortality rates should be used for are as a warning system:
1. If they are higher than the benchmark then what is wrong. Is it because of the patient mix, bad luck or is there something wrong with the system or the staff? It should be a prompt for a more detailed review
2. If they are lower than the benchmark then it should be a case of why - what (if anything) is the hospital doing right and is there anything that can be done to transfer those learnings to other facilities.
They are a tool, nothing more. It's overly simplistic to use them otherwise.
Yet again - its your opinion. Find another of equal stature who disagrees with his conclusion that 13300 real people didn't die when they could've lived with better care.
Until you do - I'll believe the resident expert on the subject. He has no political axe to grind.
The Guardian makes the point that mortality rates at ALL hospitals have plummeted in the last 10 years. In that sense, the 13,000 figure concerns hospitals where death rates have fallen less than in the rest of the country.
Jarman will make the point that death rates is not a particularly good way of measuring hospital performance.
Lefties will quote total numbers , Righties will quote nurses and doctors...
You are simply wrong , wrong and wrong in your interpretations and postings on this subject .
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100226633/of-course-labours-numbers-are-down-the-public-dont-trust-ed-and-ukip-is-collapsing-2015-is-camerons-to-lose/
"Of course Labour's numbers are down: the public don't trust Ed and Ukip is collapsing"
"There is one other thing all the polls agree on: Ed Miliband is crap. Or rather, the British people do not think he has what it takes to be Prime Minister, which in politics amounts to the same thing. Perceptions about Miliband are now set in stone. He could deport Len McCluskey, introduce hanging for shoplifters and personally lead an audacious commando raid to overthrow Kim Jong-un. And people would still see him as weak and indecisive."
Given the slew of appalling evidence that the NHS isn't just imperfect but seriously flawed - some still seek to pretend its all nothing but fuss and nonsense.
I take a different view - if there's problems, fix them - don't be too scared to say the baby is ugly, though there is something very wrong with it.
Why can Isle of Man (outside UK) have an arrangement with the pound and Scotland cannot. Is it because they do not have nuclear weapons and oil?
Confirm Scotland has every right as an owner of the pound to do what they want and we might finally make progress with some of you southern Neanderthals....
Just kidding I think.
Waving away the deaths of 13300 people who didn't need to die cuts no ice with me or the vast majority of the population.
Newsnight had the Danny Boyle pyjama party clip playing last night - even Kirsty Wark was suggesting in hindsight it was ill judged.
For anyone who's interested = here's the linky http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b037bkxz/Newsnight_15_07_2013/
"Allowing Andy Burnham to remain in charge of Labour's health brief may prove to be one of Ed Miliband's biggest strategic blunders. Today we are finding out why. The shadow health secretary has so far appeared on ITV's Daybreak, BBC Breakfast and the Today programme – and in each appearance he tried, in desperation, to turn the public's ire about the NHS crisis (specifically in relation to the Keogh Review of 14 NHS trusts) towards the Tories."
"Perhaps worst of all for Burnham, Professor Sir Brian Jarman, one of Sir Bruce Keogh's advisers, says he warned health officials about high death rates for a decade.
"My view is that there was political pressure for the information to be ignored and had been ignored at least since 2001," he told BBC Breakfast earlier. "I actually sent the data to Andy Burnham in March 2010 and seven of the hospitals in the 14 were among the ones that I sent him." And the result? “Effectively nothing happened,” says Prof Jarman."
Even I'm prepared to accept that labour have a stronger case here than might at first seem apparent.
What is hammering labour is a total refusal to accept that ANYTHING went wrong on their watch. That is clearly complete and utter rubbish.
It's also a question of attitude. Labour are clearly piqued that anybody has the brazen effrontery to criticise them on the NHS.
If labour had started by saying yes there were mistakes but we believe the NHS is way better than it was under the tories, they might be in a better position.
1) Issue your own currency, let it float against the pound (probably with some central bank intervention to dampen down volatility in the exchange rate).
2) Issue your own currency, try to peg it to the pound.
3) Use the pound, but without any say in monetary policy since it would be a foreign country's currency.
4) Adopt the Euro, although it's unclear how you get there since the accession method involves having your own currency and gradually locking it to the Euro through ERM. That rules it out in the short term.
The first three options are perfectly practical, although 2 and 3 don't give you much flexibility and 2 runs the risk that the markets move against you making the peg unsustainable. Option 1 of course has the disadvantage of foreign-exchange risk and costs for the the huge amount of trade with the rest of the UK.
On balance, I'd have thought 3 was the best option, at least to start with, but you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking it's a currency union. It's not, it's using a foreign country's currency.
It's not about How Many but How Well. Using manning stats is like arguing BT was better in 1990 than 2005.
Anybody who can put labour on the back foot on their number one issue surely deserves some credit.
http://www.espn.co.uk/redbull/motorsport/story/116507.html
Does make it look like the Aussie will replace his countryman.
Bradford East
Dewsbury
Brent Central
Brentford & Isleworth
Dundee East
Keighley
Harrow East
Ealing Central & Acton
Carmarthen East & Dinefwr
Cleethorpes
Ilford North
Brigg & Goole
(+ Bradford West which wasn't in the original target list)
So it’s London and Yorkshire that are the regions behind.
The Guardian as a newspaper is dead, iPhone subscribers are down to 57k, iPad subscriptions are barely rising. They are relying more heavily on advertising income and after their whole digital push, they still only derive 28% of their revenue from digital operations, that's just sad. I've seen snails move faster tbh.
Some would say they brought it on themselves by lambasting NI for sticking up a paywall as that perpetuated the sense of entitlement their readers had to free news media access which in turn has made it much harder for them to convert their readers into paying subscribers for the iPhone and iPad apps. They also haven't got a coherent strategy to roll out on Android with proper paid subscriptions either, and Android now holds 60% of market share for smartphones in the UK. The Guardian's obsession with Apple and iPhone is now hurting them financially.
All in all, there is a path out for them, but they need to be more aggressive and put up a paywall like the Telegraph, limited free access, paid subscription for full access as that would still allow them to maintain some relevancy on the internet and keep advertising revenues up unlike the Times which, for a long time, went under the radar after their paywall went up.
Some figures for digital subscriptions:
iPhone revenue - £458000
iPad revenue - £3,300,000
Compared to the Times which last I had heard crossed 120,000 paying subscribers with ARPS at ~ £130. What's more is that the paywalls at both the Times and Telegraph is working to slow the descent of newspaper sales, the former is down by just 2.3% and the latter is down by just 4.6% YoY. The Guardian, who don't have a paywall for the main website have sales down by 11.6% YoY.
Interesting times for news media in the UK. I think by the end of the year it will just be the BBC and Daily Mail that remain free for unlimited reading (I think the BBC may even put up a paywall for non UK visitors given the heavy cost burden it has for them).
Quite. What's Burnham getting so agitated about?
"Since ICM started doing polls for the Guardian in 1984, only once has an opposition actually improved on its share of the vote at this point in the electoral cycle, and that was from such a subterranean level during William Hague’s leadership that there really was only one way for the Tory vote to go. The simple fact is that, whatever Labour’s relative CM poll rating is today, it is virtually certain to be lower – and probably much lower – in two years time.
Another thing all the polls are telling us is Ed Miliband and Labour are going backwards. At the turn of the year, double-digit Labour poll leads were the norm. Today, they are the exception.
That’s not what’s supposed to be happening. The 50p tax rate has come into effect. So has the bedroom tax. And the benefit cap. The squeeze on living standards is continuing. The NHS reforms are being implemented. More public service cuts have been unveiled. This should be the time for Labour to be driving ever deeper into enemy territory. Instead, they are in retreat.
Then there is Ukip. Different pollsters have different methodologies for measuring support for Nigel Farage and his merry men, but all the pollsters agree on one thing: that support is declining. And as it does, Tory support it rising..." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100226633/of-course-labours-numbers-are-down-the-public-dont-trust-ed-and-ukip-is-collapsing-2015-is-camerons-to-lose/
13300 people who didn't need to die, didn't die.
etc etc.
Go on - explain this? I'm all ears. I've seen several posts rubbishing what the leading expert on mortality deaths says - but nothing to refute it.
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/if-you-were-jean-eric-vergne/
No wonder they're desperate to attack Crosby.
Real people with loved ones never existed. They are *statistics* and therefore didn't die and everything is fine.
If this is the case - why is there an enormous scandal about it? All these relatives are clearly imaging things.
It's Kafkaesque.
That is what this boils down to, methinks.
So how exactly do the mortality figures show there were no excess deaths? Or are you saying that because it is unlikely to be exactly 13,300 it somehow doesn't matter?
Burnham has been a terrible choice as Sh Sec because he's too implicated in the past. I had that discussion with you a few months back and you said Labour were right to tough it out; Ed wouldn't be taking the flak if he'd moved him back then - Burnham is damaged goods. And EdM is taking the same risk with Balls on the economy.
He has managed to easily demolish two of the Tories' biggest propagandists - Fraser Nelson and Dan Hannan - in the space of 24 hours.
Bravo.
All highly relevant stuff given how the Tory "excess NHS deaths" smear is being laid to waste this morning.
As long as that was low - hell mend the patients.
I'm quite happy to accept what he says. I'm not an expert - and neither are you or others you've cited. I'm also not reduced to insulting you as stupid - merely arrogant - game over.
They don't tell us why they were higher.
It may be that some of the deaths were avoidable. But it may also be that the deaths were not avoidable. (For instance, certain specialist units have higher death rates because they take on the worst cases - but it doesn't mean we should abolish them).
We *simply do not know* from these statistics whether there is a systemic problem or not.
All we can tell is that we need to look a heck of a lot closer.
Politically, if the answer to all these questions was yes, then were these figures ignored or suppressed because of political convenience? I'd sort of assumed this was the case but then I'm very cynical about politicians.
This is so blindingly obvious that I wonder why this debate is still going on.
"However tempting it may be, it is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/16/report-nhs-hospitals-claims-care?CMP=twt_gu