So Desperate!

[SueEllen]

Now who's being desperate? Neither the Starmers nor the Tories said anything about his wife being Jewish, that was raised by Labour themselves. So a completely bogus accusation, typical of the level of political discourse we've come to expect this time around.

I'm surprised you didn't know Starmer's wife was Jewish due to the situation around Corbyn as that's why it was known.

Also - though maybe because who I am related to and where I live - if someone says they have to do something on Fridays particularly evenings with their family I automatically assume it is due to religion.

And Rishi has a point, the role of PM is a 24x7 one, you can't simply stop doing it. Obviously if there isn't a crisis to deal with at 6:00pm on a Friday then go and be with the family. Sadly, a lot of the time, that won't be the case. But where Starmer is wrong is saying that it is his decision; it isn't, it's an aspiration; a worthy one, of course, but still only an aspiration.

It is his decision. If there is nothing going on then he's not available on Friday evenings for a couple of hours. I'm surprised you haven't met senior people in your working life who block time out regularly for things that are important to them but are still contactable if it is an emergency.

[SueEllen]

Actually...

1) gross government mismanagement and general apathy (all use private care)

Saddling the NHS with a host of expensive, eternal PFI build-and-maintain programmes meaning something pathetic like changing a light bulb in a laboratory costs a couple of hundred quit.

Imposing a long list of performance targets (e.g. waiting times in A&E) meaning having to hire an army of administrators to record, measure and report them without actually having any impact on performance

Re-Writing the GP contracts to cut down their hours. That leads to no initial triage happening, inordinate waiting times for appointment and people treating A&E as the primary care source. Meaning longer queues and waiting times.


Politically motivated industrial action by the GMC losing millions of appointment dates and operations, meaning longer waiting lists (see performance measures above).

A failure to train doctors and requiring even basic medical staff to have a degree in a short list of subjects - even MLAs need a degree these days.

A failure to centralise procurement for a huge number of common items and leveraging the buying power of the NHS but moving that down to the individual Trusts to manage

Imposing a diversity and equality agenda on recruitment, meaning even hiring an MLA (look them up) takes upwards of three months and hiring managers have to interview candidates who are through no fault of their own hopelessly unsuited to the role (want to trust your blood microscopy to someone who is partially sighted?)

2) the mess?? - the Tories, - who else?

Er no. All the above firmly at the door of the Blair/Brown administrations...

That's the short answer. Over 60% of NHS expenditure is not going to patient care. And there isn't an NHS, there are instead several hundred separate NHS's all competing for the same resources.

Not a pretty picture is it. Fixing it will be a nightmare, if not an impossibility.

The GMC (General Medical Council) isn't a union it is the registry body of doctors.

[malvolio]

The GMC (General Medical Council) isn't a union it is the registry body of doctors.

You think? tsk tsk....


I think I meant the BMA though.

[SueEllen]

You think? tsk tsk....


I think I meant the BMA though.

Yeah you mean the BMA one of the doctors trade unions.

Not every doctor agrees with them and/or belongs to their union.

You haven't mentioned in your rant that every GP practice, lots of dental practices, lots of opticians and some labs are part or is an independent company that provides NHS services. (Yes there are really lots of people who don't know that.)

Also you forgot the Lansley’s reforms or the Health and Social Care Act 2012 - that happened under the Tories.

[malvolio]

Yeah you mean the BMA one of the doctors trade unions.

Not every doctor agrees with them and/or belongs to their union.

You haven't mentioned in your rant that every GP practice, lots of dental practices, lots of opticians and some labs are part or is an independent company that provides NHS services. (Yes there are really lots of people who don't know that.)

Also you forgot the Lansley’s reforms or the Health and Social Care Act 2012 - that happened under the Tories.

No, I hadn't forgotten any of those. Nor that Hunt tried to back out Lansley's damaging reforms, an exercise that is still ongoing, but which is why there are "lots of NHS's" still, with yet another Quango sitting on top of them trying to get to a degree of cohesion.

But my rant - which is nothing of the sort - merely tried to summarise the problems facing anyone, regardless of party, who fancies trying to untangle the mess and deliver a Health Service somewhat closer to Bevan's original concepts.


(And FTAOD, I am closer to all this than you might imagine, having been married to someone who progressed from MLA to head of pathology services in a major hospital over the last 40 odd years and witnessed all the ongoing chaos at first hand).

[SueEllen]

Now The Sun (and Murdoch) have come out for Labour at the last minute.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...neral-election