Barely a third think they’ll get timely treatment from the NHS – politicalbetting.com
Barely a third think they’ll get timely treatment from the NHS – politicalbetting.com
The YouGov polling for tomorrow’s Sunday Times highlights what I believe will be an increasing challenge for the new government when Truss takes over.
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All of this is absolutely impossible for the Conservatives, and Labour can only get away with it if they lie about their tax and spend plans before an election, and then do all of it afterwards, because elderly homeowners - without whose support fuck all can be done in this country - won't wear a prospectus that involves them having to pay for shit rather than young people. So we'll probably carry on as we are, until everything collapses. Which might not be very far away at the rate things are going.
This announcement is old news, which I missed until a piece on Mail online today about Dale Vince's ideas for the energy cap:
"Dr Dale Vince OBE – the green industrialist, founder of Ecotricity, inventor of the Sky Diamond, and Chairman of Forest Green Rovers, has today announced he’s looking to find a new owner for Ecotricity – the world’s first green energy company, as he considers a move in a very different direction – into the world of politics.
In a message to the company’s staff, later shared on social media, Dale said the move was to “clear the decks for some new frontiers” including the next general election , which he described as the “most important of our lives”. "
https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-news/2022/dale-vince-to-leave-ecotricity
I seem to recall there was some discussion a few weeks back about some kind of climate change party standing at next GE. Is this what he is hinting at?
But our GP service is really, really poor. I think some parts of the NHS are working well, others... less so.
@lottelydia
In Blair's resignation speech, given in his constituency in May 2007, one almost throwaway line was 'Ask when you last had to wait a year or more on a hospital waiting list, or heard of pensioners freezing to death in the winter unable to heat their homes.'
https://twitter.com/lottelydia/status/1563502197782253569
Was seen & treated privately that same week. Would have been a minimum six months wait, probably much more after waiting three+ months for the initial consultation to kick in, if it ever did. (Obviously they have a bias, but our provider told us NHS patients he had referred recently were waiting six months for urgently necessary treatment, never mind relatively minor things that could be left for longer.)
On the flip side, older relatives who have had a suspected stroke recently have received prompt & excellent care. It’s not all doom & gloom, but for a lot of people if they cannot afford private treatment then they’re just going to have to wait & hope their problem doesn’t get any worse in the meantime (which it probably will of course) .
It's as likely to happen as Amanda Spielman doing something that would benefit children, but it would be a vast improvement.
I was told by my local council recently my GP needed to fill an online form about something utterly trivial to do with my wife's care. Why? It does not need a GP to do this!
They are the absolute bedrock of the health system.
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19.5 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
20 Rishi Sunak 5%
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/c9lg/pse
Was reading Brillo in the Mail claiming the problems of the new PM are nowhere near as severe as when Thatcher took over in 1979.
I beg to differ.
But in general cricket is thriving. The Indian Premier League is one of the richest, and most watched sports leagues in the world. I’ve just been reading the stats. Incredible sums
It can only be good for cricket that money is flooding in. Yes it will change the sport but this means sport will survive and prosper and attract young kids, creating the stars of the future
Eg I’ve realised that the IPL money could save West Indian cricket. As we know windies cricket has been on a long downwards slope and many Caribbean boys are playing basketball and looking at the NBA
With the money you can now make in cricket (without having to be 7 foot tall) they will surely return to their first native sport: cricket
The money means cricket will expand globally, as well
https://www.economist.com/culture/2022/08/26/the-footballisation-of-cricket
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/10/20/cricket-looks-set-to-become-a-global-game
I adore cricket. This summer has reminded me of that. It’s great that it prospers
My wife needed to see a specialist doctor this week. She called up his hospital and got an appointment for the following day.
Yes, it’s a private insurance-based system, but the insurance is compulsory for employers, and you can see almost any specialist within a couple of days - rather than a couple of hundred days. Just think about that for a minute.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/28/centre-right-climate-party-ed-gemmell-launches-oust-tory-mps-opposing-climate-action
"Liz Truss’s sound leadership will help Britain prosper"
https://twitter.com/MoS_Politics/status/1563566519744835584
Blair had many attributes but perhaps his best was knowing EXACTLY when to get out lol
Yes, they have excellent healthcare available and there is stuff we can learn from them but it is very far from something that is easy and desirable to replicate here.
My money is on it being the Atari Portfolio.
His deranged acolytes will poison the Tory Party
Dominic Sandbrook"
https://unherd.com/2022/08/how-to-get-over-boris-johnson/
In a GP practice, you're very lucky if you see the same GP twice on consecutive appointments, even if it's for the same condition.
And that's not to deny most GPs work hard and do their best within the limits of the system they're in. I'm sure most do. But the system doesn't work.
And if you're not going to have continuity of attendance, what's the point of GPs rather than drop in centres?
I should note in Cannock it's gone the other way. We've lost our minor injury unit so if you need anything seen urgently you can get a GP appointment - not really, actually, because none are ever available - or go to one of Stafford, Lichfield or Wolverhampton.
Didn't wash then and it won't wash now.
He resigned at the end of June 2007, by the beginning of August Lehman Brothers were in the news.
What I can't do is ring up at 9am and say I want to see my named GP and expect to be in his office by 11am.
But no system could deliver that.
If I want to speak to a doctor on the day it has to be whichever one of them is 'on call' for quickfire appointments.
Efficiency minister Jacob Rees-Mogg spent £1,300 of public money travelling to Wales by car.
A return train ticket would have cost £98.
I have to confess to mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, Rees-Mogg is clearly behaving here like an entitled, hypocritical, fantastically rich prick. As per usual.
On the other hand, if you tried to get from London to Wrexham and back by train it would probably take about a week. Combination of knackered tracks, digging up and replacing knackered tracks, broken down trains, industrial action, connecting services that are deliberately planned so you have to wait as long for the connections to arrive as humanly possible, and about 50,000 other duff excuses for late notice delays and cancellations ("unavailability of train crew" is the favourite at the moment, but anything else, up to and including swans trespassing on the line and signalling equipment being struck by lightning, is also possible.)
Anyone who needs to rely on trains to get around knows how abject they can be, and frequently are.
I can't believe the Psion 5 was as late as 1997. I loved mine. I'd still love a similarly-formatted device as I don't get on with on-screen keyboards very well. Other people seem to be able to type at 100 wpm on them; I manage about 3...
The plan for the UK needs to be to rapidly expand healthcare provision, but without hosing yet more money at the NHS. There need to be incentives for employers, and incentives for healthcare companies to invest in expansion of private services, which needs to include a huge expansion of training places. Every solution starts with many more doctors and many more hospitals.
The NHS is definitely one of those “well I wouldn’t start from here” problems though.
Here’s the guy who devised the first rules of cricket WHICH ARE STILL DETERMINED IN MARYLEBONE
“Charles Bennet, 4th Earl of Tankerville (15 November 1743 – 10 December 1822),[2] styled Lord Ossulston from 1753 to 1767, was a British nobleman, a collector of shells[3] and a famous patron of Surrey cricket in the 1770s. He agreed a set of cricket rules that included the first mention of the Leg before wicket rule.[4]”
The 4th Earl of Tankerville. Brilliant. And his wiki entry gets better
“Education: Eton College
Occupation: Gentleman
Known for: Cricket”
And this
“Tankerville often played cricket and seems to have been a very good fielder, though he was not especially noted for batting or bowling. He was the employer of Edward "Lumpy" Stevens, who was a gardener at Tankerville's Walton-on-Thames estate; and William Bedster, who was his butler. It was the accuracy of "Lumpy" Stevens that led to the introduction of a middle stump. Prior to 1776 there were only two stumps and Lumpy's deliveries could go through the hole. A permanent memorial to Lumpy Stevens has been proposed.[“
This multibillion pound global sport now thrilling billions of people, especially in Asia, dates back to the 4th Earl of Tankerville (occupation: gentleman) and his gardener “Lumpy” Stevens
Genius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bennet,_4th_Earl_of_Tankerville
And includes the required occasional reminder to the tabloid media that someone who does not command the Commons is not the bloody PM no matter how much they cross their fingers and burn effigies of Sunak.
Ultimately, though, energy consumption has to decline meaningfully in the UK. The price of coal has gone through the roof. The price of natural gas has gone through the roof. Our nuclear plants are managing less uptime than was expected.
We need to reduce our demand. All the subsidies in the world don't change the fact that there is a limited amount of coal and gas in the world, and the reduction in supplies from Russia needs to be met with reduced demand.
I would suggest - as I mentioned before - scrapping the renewable levy. I would also suggest that the government looks to make direct grants to the most vulnerable households to enable them to pay their energy bills.
People used to worry about the cost of energy. They used to turn off lights when they left the room. They would never just leave the central heating on when they left the house.
It's hard, but world gas supply has fallen, and therefore demand has to fall too. We - all of us - need to be much more energy efficient.
The Atari had a big hinge looking at wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3
It also has hundreds of thousands of people who have effectively no health care. If they get sick, they're dumped back on a plane to Bangladesh.
You know what I loved about all the Psion devices? OPL. You could knock out simple apps in no time at all.
1. The public won't let go of our beloved NHS, in favour of the insurance based systems that actually work better in much of Europe, because it's "free." We can argue about how much it actually costs everyone in exchange for a highly variable quality of service, but that's moot.
2. Therefore, if you try to solve its problems by somehow incentivising a massive expansion of (very expensive) private health care provision, then you create two important new ones. Firstly, people who are somehow able to stump up the ludicrous cost of comprehensive private health insurance will start to resent being asked to pay taxation to keep the NHS going as well. Secondly, the NHS will end up rationing care in favour of the uninsured, who will primarily be - drumroll - the elderly. It'll simply transform into yet another OAP freebie financed by taxation of the already distressed working population.
The best solution to the crumbling health service - structural changes, such as more staff training places, bursaries and lower fees notwithstanding - is, I'm afraid, to throw yet more money at it BUT to ensure that this money is forcibly drained from the whole adult population and not just middle-income earners aged under 66. How else do you pay for the extra staff and extra facilities otherwise, without ending up with part-privatisation and the attendant special freebie care for olds problem?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62695778
https://gulfnews.com/how-to/your-money/mandatory-health-insurance-in-uae-1.1697940
Every pound they spend boiling the kettle to put water in the hot water bottle is a pound they're not going out and spending in shops, restaurants, pubs, takeaways...
Which would still have had a decent prospect of being faster than the train.
What's the Megabus fare?
I must confess I'm envious of @Cyclefree's day in the Lakes and having been in Cartmel barely three weeks ago (and that's a village with more than its share of Michelin stars) I have to say the racecourse looked in magnificent shape and Good doesn't really do justice to ground which looked like a carpet.
As for drinking Aperol (whatever that is) in NW London - meh. Canary Wharf was quieter today but the tubes weren't - TFL did its usual best to irritate everyone's weekend by running its usual "feast and famine" service - three or four tubes within five minutes and then nothing for nine minutes. Basic operational and line control seem to be deficient currently on some of the lines - it should be possible to run a 4-5 minute service at weekends but currently whoever is running the lines seems to struggle even with that basic concept.
On to other matters and I noted @StuartDickson's comments on the Swedish election and it does seem the Moderates are having an awful campaign. The latest Novus poll has the centre right bloc on 50.7% and the centre left grouping on 47.8% but Novus does seem to poll strongly for the Sweden Democrats in particular - the latest Sifo has a dead heat on 49.6%.
From the little I know, sounds like a good job from the hospital and 111 service.
Yippee!
Bravo
But if you don't have the resources, what happens? It is utter misery of a type which if you haven't been through it is hard to comprehend. It is like being in a darkened room with a person howling in pain and trying to find the light switch or the door handle and not even knowing whether there is a door or light switch or if there is whether there is any light outside. It affects the person suffering and those around them. It is no joke. And it is lonely because so many people do treat it as a joke or as made up or as if it's your fault. So you can add guilt and loneliness into the mix. And it is not just a health issue because so many of those who end up in our prisons have mental health issues or their children in foster care.
It is - and always has been - the Cinderella of our health service. But we should do more. We really should. Fat chance.
It's bad enough when anyone is reduced to shivering in a cold home, but when middle income earners are that hard up then it's a sure sign that the economy is failing.
They have seen their market and they are going for it ruthlessly
It generates £150m a year and that’s growing fast
Without wishing to parody another poster, the August Bank Holiday weekend has always had a bit of fin de siecle about it. It was of course at the beginning of the month back in 1914 and we all know what happened.
Nowadays, it marks the end of holidays, often the end of reliable decent weather, people notice the nights drawing in and it's now getting dark at 8. It marks the beginning of depressing normality, deteriorating weather and darkening uncertainty - no wonder people want to enjoy themselves one last time.
Lots of people earning 45k in big houses with large mortgages.
You don't need to look very far for things that compound the misery. IE trouble in the construction industry. Contractors going bust. I'm hearing a lot about this.
It certainly feels to me like we are at the start of a crash.
I don't see a solution... other than to do a 'deal' with Putin.
Thank you for your offer (fpt). That is very kind of you. It is a work-related piece - one of a series over a year - so my specialist subject. Still pressure to get it right. But I work best with a bit of adrenaline and a deadline and I've worked out what I want to write. So .... fingers crossed.
Westminster's stagnant ideology will guarantee collapse
BY ARIS ROUSSINOS
.......................................................................................................
Today, however, the British state’s inability to provide the most basic of functions — stopping crime; providing adequate healthcare, housing and functioning utilities like energy and water — are the central plank of political discussion. We have won the argument, yet there has been very little reflection on what this means, or how we have reached this dismal state of affairs. Worse, the people who brought us here are still in charge."
https://unherd.com/2022/08/its-time-for-anglofuturism/
However, Wrexham actually has a very good railway service to Crewe, which is of course the hub of the WCML and amply served by fast expresses to London. So it would only have taken 3 hours 40 minutes with one easy change to get there. Having driven from here to London and here to Rhyl many times, that compares very favourably with the road option.
He was spending the money because he didn't want to be with oiks. No other reason.
Which also means if he wanted to pay £1,300 (what was he using for fuel? Liquid gold?) he should fund the difference himself.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/19637086/labour-constitution-rule-out-snp-coalition/
I've been keen to recreate the Z88 design using modern components rather than the Psion Series 5. Basically, a top notch (but silent) keyboard, sitting below a letterbox sized display.
Given the availability of decent SBCs these days and the ability to source displays from China (maybe using the ones used for rear view mirrors), I don't reckon it would be too hard. EXCEPT for battery management. That'd be tough.
Also YAY ENGLISH SPORTS RULE THE WORLD
The West remained resolute and - in the medium term - it was the oil exporters who found themselves fucked.
If I buy a more efficient air conditioning unit that uses less power to cool a room..., then my lower usage of energy does not somehow make the country a worse place to be.
The world currently has a shortage of energy, because the world's largest gas exporter is sending 80% less abroad than it was.
In the short term, we have two options.
We could give in, stop arming the Ukrainians, and I'm sure the Russians would be happy to turn the taps back on (as well as to see sanctions removed).
Or we could be a little more efficient in our usage of energy, because there is less available than there was.
Those are really the only two short-term options.
In the medium term, we can enter into long-term energy supply contracts with politically stable countries. We can also build more solar, wind and nuclear. Storage - gas and coal - would probably also be a good idea. Having six months of gas imports lined up would have made a massive difference.
In the long term, we can also incentivize oil & gas exploration companies to drill more wells in the UK (albeit probably mostly off-shore), and also to look into unconventional sources of energy, such as coal seam methane and shale gas.
Labour are going to win in 2024
A Psion 5 replacement would be very much specialist kit. I'd love on, though. I think the late Paul Allen was working on one twenty years ago, but it was never released.
Edit: it was released, but my god, they needed a better industrial designer...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/remembering-the-flipstart-mobile-pc-by-microsoft-cofounder-paul-allen/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_FlipStart
Also: where the Psion 5 really won was from using just two AA batteries and getting tremendous life out of them.