MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Is this whole "Dido for the NHS" thing just a smoke screen, so that when some other terrible **** gets the job we'll all breathe a sigh of relief?
I read that as dildo hoarding.
Thats what threads on tory depravity gets you.
dildo hoarding
tHIs ISn't tHe brEXit i VOteD fOR
She ticks all the required boxes for high office in post-Brexit Britain
1) Laughably inept
2) Utterly corrupt
3) One of Boris’s chums
She’s a shoe in
Is this whole “Dido for the NHS” thing just a smoke screen, so that when some other terrible **** gets the job we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief?
It does sound like the Paul Dacre BBC rumours a few months ago.
Arrogant and narcissistic enough to apply for the job despite highly public examples of ineptitude and not taking responsibility when things went pear-shaped.
Doesn't matter either way. She's set for life despite being an abject failure in most of her roles.
Modern Britain. It ain't what you know - it is who. More now than at any time since the 1950s. What a backward little tin pot country.
I wish it was '...only a smokescreen' but it's highly likely she will be anointed.
It's the johnson way; arrogance, no accountability, no interest in suitability/capability/experience.
Taking back control from undemocratic incompetence.
I reckon Boris has been taking clues from von der leyden
Don't forget she wants to eliminate the NHS reliance on foreign healthcare workers. What like Irish nurses?
The foreign healthcare worker comments seem to be aimed directly at appeasing the Tory base
She's going to get the job, isn't she.
What's sad is that the NHS skills shortage needs to be fixed, but that would need huge investment in training new docs & nurses, bursaries, deal with the huge debts doctors rack up in training , raise salaries across the board in support roles too
The outsourced minimum wage crapshoot that is the testing labs says that Harding is not about that
The foreign healthcare worker comments seem to be aimed directly at appeasing the Tory base
She’s going to get the job, isn’t she.
The only stackable offence in the ENP (formerly the Conservative Party) is to criticise the glorious Brexit. Anything else goes, especially if it involves profiteering and corruption.
She's an ass kissing, serial failer, but she's got the right mates and won't rock the Brexit Boat.
She is ****ing useless, idle, incompetent the job is hers.
Modern Britain. It ain’t what you know – it is who. More now than at any time since the 1950s. What a backward little tin pot country.
Unfortunately I think you will struggle to name a country that is different
big n daft - the levels of corruption in the english parliament now are astonishing and far above any other 1st world country bar perhaps the US
First contract with dignitas? They'll be drafted into the cutting waiting lists division. Obviously you can pay/vote blue to be on a British doctor's list as opposed to the Swiss list.
How do we hide putting the NHS into the hands of foreign healthcare companies? Make noise about the foreign healthcare workers we rely on. Just don’t mention pay and conditions. Makes me gag.
She is ****ing useless, idle, incompetent the job is hers.
Reminds me of the scene in Blackadder where he suggests to the Prince Regent that an MP should be made a High Court Judge in exchange for his vote.
Prince: Is he qualified?
B: He's a violent, bigoted, mindless old fool.
Prince: Sounds a bit *over*qualified... Well, send him here at once!
It never fails to amaze me how these incompetents circulate in the top tiers of corporations, earning a fortune, moving on to the next open door...
The Times article failed to mention her husband's connections with the private health industry. Funny that.
“Let’s end our reliance on foreigners in the NHS”, says potential boss of NHS who was born abroad (in Germany).
You can’t make this shit up.
Probably won't get the post until she has completed the "Breaking Ministerial Code but hey, no problem" module.
the levels of corruption in the english parliament
Its the UK parliament. England doesnt have one.
In this case though at least the anti-corruption champion can keep a close eye on her.
“Let’s end our reliance on foreigners in the NHS”
Thing is, it's not really about foreign clinicains is it? It's about a certain type of foreign clinician. last time I looked there was something like 15% of non-UK born folk working in the NHS so it's hardly a massive issue, and I have a sneaking suspicion that if you're a Ophthalmologist who trained at Hameed Latif in Lahore, you might face more difficulties than if you trained at the Mayo Clinic or John's Hopkins...The casual racism suffered by clinicians in the NHS is still pretty bad. I can't see that this helps or that Dido would be the right person to sort it out.
The problem is that with her Times interview she is making exactly the kind of noises that play so well in Brexit Britain. She's smart enough to realise this. And Boris being the shameless opportunist that he is will not be able to resist the chance to say he's appointing someone to head the NHS who will 'get rid of all those bloody foreigners'.
As this tweet points out the sheer lack of gratitude to these people and the sacrifices they've made, all in the name of this seam of vile, toxic nationalism they're busy mining, is absolutely disgusting.
https://twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1406565924103151616?s=20
Yep, she's playing up to the morons. Why not? It is a winning strategy in Brexity Halfwit Britain.
And the morons can't see that those in power are taking the piss out of them daily.
🇬🇧🍆💦🇬🇧
Yup, you can put the NHS in the hands of foreign companies, as long as you promise* people that they won't have to hear a funny accent when they're getting medical help. But when people fall for it... whatever you do don't question their gullibility or motivations.
[ * You don't have to make good on that promise, as long as you make things much harder for those people with funny accents, and treat them as lessor to the Great people of Britain. In fact, it's better that you don't ever make good on it, otherwise you'd lose that political tool to keep the voters onside while you dismantle UK institutions and syphon out any value you any get away with. ]
Woman at work wants the NHS gone because then her NI contributions will go down. Says she's never really been ill so its not an issue for her... I decided it was better I not mention her 4 hospital born kids and just mark her down as a lost cause.
mark her down as a lost cause
Aka 'moron'.
Woman at work wants the NHS gone because then her NI contributions will go down. Says she’s never really been ill so its not an issue for her
Sadly she is not alone, there are loads of people like that. The same people who say that everyone is living a life of riley on benefits until they have to rely on benefits and it is suddenly impossible for anyone to live on.
Does she vote Conservative by any chance?
It's worth considering that Boris's backers were probably expecting the NHS to be half dismantled and sold off by now.
Had dealing with a pandemic for the last year and a half not specifically required the NHS, I reckon the scheme would have been well in motion by now.
So are we witnessing a resumption of the original plan?
i.e. install a loyal minion to begin the carving up and awarding of contracts to chums under the guise of "shaking up" a public service?
It's textbook Tory behaviour; divert money to the top 5%ers via an national institution, while telling the plebs it's for their own good. I look forward to my first ride in a G4S operated ambulance...
Still at least we smashed those Elites...
Does she vote Conservative by any chance?
No idea but I suspect so.
So are we witnessing a resumption of the original plan?
i.e. install a loyal minion to begin the carving up and awarding of contracts to chums under the guise of “shaking up” a public service?It’s textbook Tory behaviour; divert money to the top 5%ers via an national institution, while telling the plebs it’s for their own good. I look forward to my first ride in a G4S operated ambulance…
I think it's the start of it, yes.
Wondering if her incompetence is part of the deal here or if she'll simply be the figurehead while an army of consultants dismantles it piece by piece.
Can do it under the guise of a post-Covid overhaul, maybe even say it's a thank-you to the NHS for their 18 months of hard service, rewarding them with a "long-term modernisation programme" or however it is spun.
It's a good idea to end NHS reliance on overseas workers- not least because we, a rich developed country, constantly drain away highly qualified and skilled workers from the nations that invested in them.
It's just that doing it will be very expensive and takes a very long time and the government wasn't doing enough to even keep staff numbers level even before covid- quite the opposite. And the head of the NHS can't change that (regardless of whether they're completely useless or not), because it's a government decision that goes across many different departments and the most important changes all happen in education not healthcare.
as long as you promise* people that they won’t have to hear a funny accent when they’re getting medical help.
A good friend of mine is a consultant in Salford. He agreed to do some community work to get a programme of the ground and encourage some of the secondary care focused docs out of hospital, I was embarrassed one day to be looking through the F&F responses that suggested that he either Quote "**** off back to where he came from" or "I dont want to see the curry doc again, he stinks" he was pretty sanguine about it having dealt with it his entire career in the UK, but this was 2018 I think...I was disgusted TBH.
This sort of shit makes those people think they're right.
Can do it under the guise of a post-Covid overhaul, maybe even say it’s a thank-you to the NHS for their 18 months of hard service, rewarding them with a “long-term modernisation programme” or however it is spun.
I don't think the NHS will survive Covid, they'll try and get people into private health schemes to help 'relieve' the pressure on it and generally run it further into the ground,.
Those 40 hospitals would have been useful, unfortunaly all we got was some nightingale photo opportunities.
This sort of shit makes those people think they’re right.
In the Culture War, this isn't important. When you've realised your core support are racist thickos, who do you appeal to? Yep, that's right...
All the "English Born" nurses I know now live and work abroad (from as close as the Channel Islands, to as far as Australia). I'm sure the "balance" is that we "take in" more medical staff than we "send abroad", but the obsession with people only working in the country they were born in is ridiculous. But a useful tool to hide behind as the NHS is badge is given to private companies to wear while they suck the system dry and push people into using private provision.
EDIT: Not quite true, come to think of it... I know nurses who now work for care homes in the UK, rather than the NHS.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if you’re a Ophthalmologist who trained at Hameed Latif in Lahore, you might face more difficulties than if you trained at the Mayo Clinic or John’s Hopkins
Except US trained docs don’t come to the UK, I suppose because the money is so much better over there, and of course state provided healthcare is communism (and let’s not forget the AMA has been a huge barrier to reform). I’ve never worked with one, but have worked with many, many excellent S Asian colleagues.
It is all designed to appeal to narrow-minded knuckleheads.
Take the whole notion of Brexit. Even if it was possible for the UK to survive* by just erecting a massive wall and 'doing things for ourselves', that doesn't make it actually desirable to do so.
The conceit that everything elsewhere in the world is inferior to what we could do 'on our own' is ludicrous. People who are taken in by this shit need to have a good look at themselves. Unfortunately most haven't got the mental capacity to read without their lips moving, so self awareness is a bit much to ask.
*It palpably isn't.
Where is she going to finds 170,000 staff to replace the 13.8% of NHS England staff who are not UK born n bred?
How do these folk walk from one high paid job to another high paid job?, first you need to have powerful mates in a similar position..........
copy/pasted article below from Private Eye regarding dido's "illustrious" career so far
EYEBROWS were raised last week at the choice of Dido Harding to run the new National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP), given her wretched record with track-and-trace.
But seasoned Dido-watchers weren’t surprised. For the most striking feature of this ex-jockey’s career is a talent for changing horses in mid-stream, seldom staying long enough to shoulder the blame for disasters:
1995: After a stint as a trainee management consultant at McKinsey, 27-year-old Dido gets her first proper job: marketing director, no less, at Thomas Cook. “Thomas Cook spends a long time contemplating its navel,” an exec from a rival firm tells Marketing Week. “It is in character for it to recruit a consultant rather than a doer.” Harding takes the criticism in her stride: “It is common for consultants to be thought of as eggheads who don’t know what they’re doing. I want to prove I can do things before the label sticks.”
1997: Interviewed by Travel Trade Gazette, Harding makes a virtue of her ignorance. “I am not ashamed to say I do not know the travel industry as well as my colleagues. But in a team I think I bring a new perspective.”
1998: When she was hired, Thomas Cook said Harding would “look at the future for the business in five to 10 years’ time”. But after four years she is off, moving to employment services group Manpower as “senior vice-president, strategic marketing Europe”.
1999: Time for another change of horses: Harding becomes commercial director of struggling retail group Woolworths.
2000: After less than a year she gallops off to join Tesco as “commercial director for value added foods”.
2004: She is now Tesco’s “international support director”, responsible for its overseas ventures. In 2003, Dido told the Guardian that she hopes “still to be with Tesco in five years’ time”. So, inevitably…
2007: Dido deserts Tesco for arch-rivals Sainsbury: after an obligatory few months of gardening leave, in March 2008 she starts work as head of Sainsbury convenience stores. But not for long.
2009: In December, Harding announces she will join TalkTalk as chief executive in March 2010.
2011: TalkTalk incurs a £3m fine from Ofcom for sending thousands of customers inaccurate bills. The firm has to shell out a further £2.5m in refunds. During her time at TalkTalk she twice wins the Daily Mail’s wooden spoon award for providing “the worst customer service in the UK”.
2014: Dido’s old university chum David Cameron gives her a seat in parliament as a Tory peer.
2015: Cyber-criminals access the financial and personal details of more than 150,000 TalkTalk customers. Asked if the data was encrypted or not, chief executive Baroness Harding sighs: “The awful truth is that I don’t know.” Almost 100,000 customers leave TalkTalk and profits are halved.
2017: Harding leaves TalkTalk to try her hand at “public service activities”. She becomes chair of NHS Improvement, responsible for overseeing all NHS hospitals, but tells MPs on the health select committee: “I have not worked in health and social care and would be the first to admit I have a lot to learn about the sector.” She also airily rejected the MPs’ call to resign the Tory whip while holding what should be an independent post. Then along comes Covid…
2020: Following her brief, calamitous spell as track-and-trace supremo, Lady H is to chair the new NIHP. Matt Hancock dismisses MPs’ mutterings about her lack of health credentials, assuring ITV News she has “excellent experience”. Indeed, by her previous standards three years at the NHS probably do count as a wealth of experience. With Dido on board, the NIHP can now look to the future as confidently as, say, Thomas Cook or Woolworths...
Where is she going to finds 170,000 staff to replace the 13.8% of NHS England staff who are not UK born n bred?
Her audience won't ask that question - nor do most of them have the intellectual capacity to do so. So job jobbed from her point of view.
You don't have to try too hard when you're appealing to idiots. That's why they do it.
onehundredthidiot
Full MemberWhere is she going to finds 170,000 staff to replace the 13.8% of NHS England staff who are not UK born n bred?
Like I say, that's not the problem. The problem is finding the staff that the NHS needs even if we keep all of those staff AND keep recruiting at the same level from abroad. NHS England was short of 84000 FTE posts including 38000 nurses in 2020, and since we know who's in the pipeline, roughly who's going to qualify in the next few years, we know that we need to recruit 5000 more nurses from overseas just to stand still, let alone plug that gap, and that all comes before we can replace a single "overseas" member of staff.
At the same time, we had record numbers qualifying and entering the profession; but the rate of people who leave within 3 years doubled, ill health is soaring, so that's not enough. With nurses, even if we'd kept that record high going (spoiler; we haven't) it would have taken 19 years to fill the nursing staff shortage.
Again, that's all on current numbers and trends- hands up everyone who doesn't think we're going to need a lot more staff with our ageing population in those 19 years? OK thanks Dido, you can put your hand down.
It's all just absolute nonsense, mathematically impossible. And like I said, it's not just nonsense, it's outwith the remit of the NHS. In the fantasy world where we'd close the existing shortfall, deal with the fallout of covid, adapt to the increased healthcare requirements of our ageing population, we don't just need to change the NHS (although we do; we need to improve retention spectacularly, protect staff's mental health, improve working conditions, ensure genuine support from government, stop every last lie about "24 hour nhs" or "efficiency" etc).
To close the gap, we'd need to add thousands on thousands of university places. To close the gap AND replace all the "overseas" staff, it's tens of thousands. The first new doctor from the expansion that we'd need to start today, qualifies in about 2030 because the buildings they'll be trained in need to be built first. It will take time just to train the trainers; in fact the level of training required would put more burden on the NHS for several years before a single extra person came out the other end.
Meanwhile the government says we can't afford a decent payrise for the nurses we've got. So what are the odds of them funding those places, those improvements in working conditions, those hundred critical improvements to keep staff in the NHS.
I thought the private eye paste above was the best, most informed and eloquent piece of writing I’d seen on the situation. Then I read northwind’s post and revised that.
Ahh that’s where we all went wrong, you’ve got to start at the top and not the bottom and work your way up.
Must be real easy to climb the career ladder if you start at top, seems to be a path only available to a select few thou.
At least the NHS in Scotland might survive and indeed prosper when the forriners are sent packing.
Like I say, that’s not the problem.
There is no problem as far as she is concerned. Ever.
Look at how she has learned this...
By being shit everywhere she has gone, moving on before the consequences of her inability are apparent and brown-nosing the right people.
Now the inverted talent spotting process that is Brexit Populism is going to help her again. And she is laughing her tits off in private at the dolts who will fall for it. Again and again.
This is taking back control, apparently...
How do these folk walk from one high paid job to another high paid job?, first you need to have powerful mates in a similar position……….
It's a closed shop and the people who voted Leave made it even more so, not less.
Brussels bureaucrats? Yes please if it means less of our home grown spivs and con artists.
Great post northwind. Shows the scale of the ‘problem.’
Great post northwind. Shows the scale of the ‘problem.’
Definitely - goes way beyond Brexit or Covid. If people want an NHS they - and politicians - need to pay for it, not just clap like Boris's performing seals
Northwinds post should be in bold lettering in a full page advert in every newspaper tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.
TBH I basically just summarised the King's Fund numbers and added a bit of bitterness.
need to pay for it
And watch where that money goes.
I wouldn’t trust Harding or any of her close associates with a penny of my money.
Including her husband.
Northwinds post should be in bold lettering in a full page advert in every newspaper tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.
Not enough pictures and too many words for the average reading age of population.
Needs to be no more than 3 words to be effective these days.
we need to improve retention spectacularly, protect staff’s mental health, improve working conditions, ensure genuine support from government, stop every last lie about “24 hour nhs” or “efficiency” etc
Hang on! You're saying that offering a 1% pay rise in the wake of one of the most mentally and physically draining 18 months in the history of the NHS isn't going to do the trick?
4% and £500 in Scotland 🙂
Don't worry, TJ, inflation is back over 2% again to nibble away at that. Still better than an effective pay cut down here though.
Hang on! You’re saying that offering a 1% pay rise in the wake of one of the most mentally and physically draining 18 months in the history of the NHS isn’t going to do the trick?
+ all the claps you can eat 🙁
Does my head in the whole ‘protect’ the NHS narrative from the Tory muppets.
1% was an insult on top of the whole PPE farce.
As far as writing things in newspapers and convincing folk of what is going on, remember that the average reading age in the UK is of a 9 year old.
And many, many people can't read at all.
I have a 9 year old nephew, and frankly, he's an idiot.
Ahh that’s where we all went wrong, you’ve got to start at the top and not the bottom and work your way up.
Must be real easy to climb the career ladder if you start at top, seems to be a path only available to a select few though
when we talk about a ‘glass ceiling’ we forget about the glass floor above it that it’s supporting. Just as it’s difficult to break through that ceiling no matter how capable or qualified you may be it’s also difficult to fall through the glass floor no matter how inept you are.
the average reading age in the UK is of a 9 year old.
I thought you were making that up until I checked. Suddenly the world makes sense.
Reading isn’t a higher intellectual function. The ability to read or not, or how well you read and write, reveals nothing about someone’s intelligence.
It does affect your ability to take in information communicated to you IF it is too complicated for you to understand. Which is why I was talking about articles/Northwind's post being put it in the newspaper.
The Sun is written so that a child could read it.