General Chat

Janet, i think the 25% is standard, for all councils

Eldrick, My wife works for the NHS and has said for the last ten years that their are far more management with all the admin staff management need to operate, Jobs created for the different health authority's to meet government targets and none of them have actually helped to make things better but more of a hindrance to the doctors and nurses actually doing the job of patient care

and when Gordon Brown raised national insurance contributions to fund more nurses and give them a pay rise in the health authority my wife works for, this money was not spent on more nurses or better pay for them, it actually payed for more pay for managers and although it looked like nurses got a pay increase they did not, what actually happened was that the nurses get payed according to the pay band/scale so they increased the pay for the band the nurse was in but at the same time they dropped every nurse one band which meant they were at a lower band which meant they never actually got a pay rise and they never got the extra qualified staff by way of more nurses on the wards

Roy

Janet...It's the same by me & im in Surrey

Yep, the NHS has got strange priorities. £500 MILLION on quack remedies for a start - a pet of mine. If people want stupid things like homeopathy, don't spend my tax money on it, pay for it yourself. As you say, a surfeit of management roles.

I'd prefer it if this government stopped saying all this is to encourage people back to work. Tax cuts won't encourage people back to work...benefits cuts won't encourage people back to work, cutting child allowance to the better paid won't encourage people back to work..

They seem to have missed an important point. JOBS will encourage people back to work.

As for the NHS, yes I agree that there are too many chiefs and not enough indians. I certainly won't mind paying taxes if it went into our NHS for healthcare for all, and with all these tory tax cuts how on earth are they going to fund our NHS (note: OUR NHS)? But they are gradually ruining it, and (controversial statement warning) undoing all the good the Labour Govt did manage to do.

When I was first referred to my hip surgeon for a replacement, the waiting list was 18 months long, back in 2005. At that time, my mum had her hip replaced at Hinchingbrooke hospital, under the NHS, but done in the Bupa hospital, which was a measure Labour brought in to shorten waiting lists and relieve the numbers of people desperately in need of such surgery. My consultant deferred putting me on the waiting list for a year while I had cortisone injections to relieve the pressure and pain, some worked, some didn't but hey. in 2006 I was put on the waiting list for my replacement, and by that time it was only 6 months. I had my hip replaced 6 months later.

Now that same waiting list has increased again. Figure it out for yourselves.

But for the way they looked after my fiance, and continue to do so, I cannot fault them.

I dont' know about quack remedies, I would imagine they only use those that research has shown ARE beneficial to the patient.

TeresaW, After nearly 8 years in government they came to power in 1997 and by 2005 so had failed to do anything about waiting times so used Bupa hospital to help bring down the waiting list?

Not a very good advert for labour i think

and this government are putting more money into the NHS so your statement is not true ( that they are making cuts)

the labour government wasted most of the money spent on the NHS due to them using micro management techniques and not spending it on patient care

If you do your own research on quack remedies used by the NHS you will find that most actually find that these remedies have the same effect as a placebo so not the best use of public money

as for JOBS see my earlier post on page one

Roy

Nope, they even use and pay for nonsense like therapeutic touch stuff and faith healers. Although, to be fair, the HOSC did reccommend cutting it all right back. They are bound to take more notice of the cochrane collaboration reports now, and about time too.

And now heres a controversial one. Those that can afford it should be oblliged to pay at least a contribution towards medical expenses. If that means some sort of means testing, so be it. Maybe by insurance - whatever.

But in an age when life expectancy is increasing annually, new treatments are being discovered almost daily and costs are rising out of control, it needs brave and strong action to keep any sort of healthcare system maintained by the state in a functioning condition.

Oh, I have some controversial views on the NHS, thats for sure. Especially on self inflicted injury and illnesses!

Eldrick, I totally agree with all of that controversial or not

Roy

I'm not trying to advertise for Labour, I'm stating fact. The NHS hospitals couldn't cope with the numbers waiting, so the bupa (paid for by the NHS) were used to help reduce numbers by getting them their operations faster, thus reducing NHS waiting lists. Mum didn't pay for it. Something had to be done.


I didn't say they were cutting funds to the NHS. I said, if you read properly, with all the TAX CUTS they are making how are they going to fund the NHS?


And you really believe this government will fund the creation of more jobs do you? We'll see. None of their policies have worked so far still 80+ people chasing each job in this area, no investment in the infrastructure for manufacturing or clerical, cuts to public services and so on, unemployment figures are stills set to peak later this year.

IF the rich actually do invest in jobs?... I think a fair few of them invest in homes in other countries, spend their money in other countries and don't give a tuppenny damn about investing it back here....imo and experience.

Isn't the point really that the gap between rich and poor has widened and continues to do so? how can that be if the rich are investing in the UK? that's probably a rhetorical question btw if they had been investing in the UK ( as opposed to where they got a better return like the Iceland bank...and even the charities invested there and got screwed accordingly) we possibly wouldn't be in such a bad state.


re nhs It is a personal bugbear of mine that so much money is pumped into providing sometimes substandard care for the elderly and those who need home care, and yet if one is a carer for a relative one is expected to live on very little and do the job for next to nothing ,,,, giving up work ( assuming you have a job) to care for someone almost guarantees that you will be poor in old age. How many families would make the choice to look after an elderly relative if it didn't mean them being empoverished themselves in their own old age?. Homes at £1000 a week can't be a better option than making it feasible to look after someone at home....


sorry gone off at a tangent, but it's all related somewhere along the line...and mention of DC brings down a red mist that tends to leave me incoherent lolol.

I do think it's a good idea to cut Child benefit for high earners... but then I have been saying that since DC was in short pants ;-)

Me too Rose, I've been saying Child Benefit should be means tested since Diana got it for Wills and Harry!

TeresaW, OK fact, 8 years on and they still had to pay bupa to do the job of the NHS when they came to office,

The NHS hospitals couldn't cope (your words not mine)

Gordon Brown's own wards was that never before had a new administration ever been left a more healthy balance sheet

You would have thought that with a healthy balance sheet
they could have invested enough in the NHS to not need to farm the work out to private hospitals

Roy

18 consecutive years of conservative government Roy...if they were that good why were THEY voted out? just a question :-D

because they lost the confidence of the people. Same reason as why Labour were voted out last time - thats the system!

Nothing, not even religion, raises passions like politics! I love a good old political row, lol.

Personally speaking, IMHO Blair should be in prison for war crimes. How he got away with lying to the country and to the government to justify his crusade into Iraq is beyond my comprehension. Then we would have had a real tory government in power who would have been able to do something about this mess before labour managed to screw everything up.

Discuss :-D :-D :-D :-D

RamblingRose, The gap between the rich and the poor got bigger under the last labour government and that is probably the main point as that cannot be fair

I have nothing against any one who makes money through their own hard work and good luck to them but we do have plenty of wealth people who are greedy and don't share with the work force by way of fair wage for a fair days work.

I worked for a man he was the 8th richest man in Cheshire and he used the recession to cut every ones pay and then boasted to the press about his increased profits an extra 2 million 12 months later

now that does need to be looked at and i wonder how many more companies did that?

18 consecutive years of conservative government i note Eldrick answered that

Roy

Back later, got to go out but will catch up soon

Roy

aside from wars , I think its important to put the economic situation here in a wider context...it was a recession that hit worldwide not just the UK,,, I am not saying that Labour was 'good' or the Conservatives 'bad' ...I have no doubt though that had the Con-dems been in power when the recession hit they would be seen in much the same light as Labour...ie the ones who let it happen....

And why were the waiting lists that long in the first place Roy? I was living in Essex when at last 18 years of tory rule came to an end. By that time THREE orthopaedic hospitals had been closed and the orthopaedic facilities had been 'centralised' into Broomfields Hospital in Chelmsford, then wards had been closed, beds had been closed.

Let's not mention the state of hygeine in the hospitals. \it was the Tories who started the trend of cutting employed hospital cleaners and using contract and agency cleaners to do half the job. Yes I know Labour did it too, or allowed the hospitals to continue to do it, but I remember cleaning staff outside Addenbrokes in Cambridge for YEARS protesting against it...and now look! MRSA, C.Dif, rife!

So, when does this government stop blaming labour for everything that is wrong and start looking back further to their own previous policies?

As I said I am not trying to advertise for Labour, heaven forbid!, but successive governments have slowly brought this country to it's knees between them. Labour had 18 years of tory mess to inherit, the coalition had 8 years of labour mess to inherit, and the next government will inherit a right royal mess from this one, and so it goes on.

We;ll it weas labour who let it happen, it was on their watch and they took the blame. But the root cause of the recession has been lost and forgotten. Toxic debt caused by greed. All round greed, from the man in the street to the wealthiest tycoon. Banks, shareholders, everyone. Greed, pure and simple. And when the toxic debt could no longer be serviced, the whole pack of cards came a tumbling down.

Now we expect a government to wave a wand and fix it, but we still ask for more money, pay rises, higher this and more of that. Its a great opposition sound bite to shout more jobs, less tax. They can say what they want and so they will in an attempt to get back in power. But they haven't got any answers - no one has. There is no magic fix for this and everyone has to tough it out until the corner is turned. Or we turn into a communist state - which is not something I would enjoy very much :-)

i blame the labour government for the mess the countries in now
but feel the conservative government lets down the poor to

as for the NSH more cover ups than Watergate
to many white collar workers not enough nurses or doctors

and why do MPs that are paid stupid amounts of money
need cut price drinks in the bar of parliment
two homes plenty of boarding houses in London

I think Eldrick has summed it up beautifully. Back in 2005, at my nephews wedding, it hit me like a sledgehammer - his wife had just bought a new car (small but new). They were both in the hospitality industry and he earned a pittance, she a bit more but not fantastic money. They had managed to get thousands in loans, very easily, and I thought then that we are living with a time-bomb if credit is this easy to come by! And yes, they were both hopeless with money and he is still in deep doodoo (but divorced).