I rolled a car on black ice while not wearing a seatbelt I got nothing but a few scratches from broken glass.
I love all these hard man stories. Very entertaining.
Entertaining but true. Nothing hard man about it. Seat belt wearing in 1980 was a minority. The car in question did not have the new fangled inertia reel belts so being belted meant you couldn't lean over to adjust the radio etc.
I love all these hard man stories. Very entertaining.
survivorship bias..
It sort of doesn’t matter if you are recruiting & training more staff if the existing staff are leaving at a faster rate ( which is what has happened over the last few years! )
I hate to agree with Chekw but making a long career in the NHS an attractive proposition at all levels is (IMHO) a key thing.
The NHS has relied on the good will, sense of duty and caring nature of its staff to go over and above for many years “because things have to get done or people suffer” and that goodwill has worn out for many people. The pressures of COVID May have brought it to a head but it’s an issue that already existed years before.
There are people I know who think that privatisation of the NHS will be fine as they have a Bupa or Benenden package that is quite affordable.
They don't seem to realise that their packages exclude the GP service, A&E and the safety net of having the NHS to step in if the private hospital runs into problems it can't solve.
I'm in Switzerland at the moment, staying with the Inlaws You have to get private health care insurance as there is no state cover at all. My FIL's annual health policy costs £11000. Yes, eleven thousand pounds a year to insure a healthy 82 year old with no ongoing issues. For a laugh I got a theoretical quote for me as a healthy 50 year old. Five grand.
Most Brits have absolutely no idea of the cost of health care and what it means if the NHS is replaced with a fully private service.
I genuinely, still stand by my view, think a special low income tax rate for NHS workers is the start.
That’s the Richard Tice gimmick you’re repeating there, yeah? Just increase pay. NHS staff are the last people who want to be opting out of their commitment to pay their fare share of tax. JUST PAY THEM MORE.
The NHS has relied on the good will, sense of duty and caring nature of its staff to go over and above for many years “because things have to get done or people suffer” and that goodwill has worn out for many people.
Agreed, and it all comes down to understaffing paired to rising demand. Poor planning and corner cutting by our government. A friend of mine was a committed NHS nurse ‘till the pisstaking on staffing levels took it’s toll. Now working on Jersey with a full team. So we’re back to training more… people are leaving because we haven’t been training enough coworkers to share their burdens (with a side serving of no longer being somewhere European staff fancy coming to work). Cutting real pay year on year is also a smack in the face for long standing staff as they burn out trying to cover missing staff.
^^^
TBF he's correct. I remember our cub scout leader had a volvo estate. Trips out for the pack of 15-20 were often done in 3-4 estate cars with a gaggle in the boot with no seat belts. No seat belts worn on thr back seat either.
Fricking madness when you think about it now, but there you go.
Now, about this bunch of conmen, bigots and cretins we have running this country (and running the NHS into the ground)...
Now, to address the troll's accusations of a NHS worker 'sitting on her arse' during the early part of covid in 2020...
Utter bollocks. My wife was a radiographer in a community hospital at that time. Not much scope for bog standard broken bone xrays at that time, you would think - people afraid to go into hospital, being advised to stay away and avoid risky activity. You would be partly right. However, given the fact that each xray room had to be fully scrubbed down, PPE changed etc between each patient and there were still chest xrays needing doing on covid patients - they were just as busy as normal. And that is without the redeployment to city hospitals to cover there - mobile chest xrays, general extra faff setting up temporary wards etc. She was flat out and never knew from one day to the next where she would be working and for how long.
On a marginally more happy note - concerning my wife's £8 a day parking expense plus the fine for not realising (in the dark with no signage and a coin operated machine) that the council had doubled the parking charge. She noticed that there is a patch of semi waste ground owned by a car dealership near the rip off car park. Being an enterprising sort and quite personable, she had a word with the manager of the dealership on the off chance she could rent a space, on an ad hoc basis, to park her car. Luckily the dealership isn't staffed by the type of person who would make a good Tory minister, because they said it was fine, chocolate biscuits appreciated for the staff, though. Oh, and as a couple of other NHS staff have already had the same idea, you can't mention it to anyone else or it will screw it for all of you.
So there we have it - we are now saving £4 (soon to be £8) per day.
But you have to remember that this small result for us is due to a NHS key worker having to ask (completely 'off-book') for space on wasteground to park for less than £8 per day. To work at a hospital that has a tent in the car park for triage.
To reiterate - * the *ing Tories and * you if you vote for them. And * you if you swallow their lies and regurgitate them as your own.
That’s the Richard Tice gimmick you’re repeating there, yeah?
I never parrot politicians but I am not sure if the are parroting me. No, I don't listen to politicians at my age as I can think for myself and if they don't like it that's their problem.
Just increase pay. NHS staff are the last people who want to be opting out of their commitment to pay their fare share of tax. JUST PAY THEM MORE.
In the immediate term they have to give in or it will just a brutal nastiness for all.
But in the long-run that increase pay will not work. For decades that's exactly what the past govts have done. Pay rise.
Put it this way.
In order to give a pay rise, the govt needs to find some money first.
Then they silent the strike by agreeing to pay as demanded.
But then when the pay has risen, without the tax rate being adjusted down, means the more pay the workers get the more tax they pay.
Eventually, what you have is earning more, especially in NHS, will meant you have to struggle to maintain motivation day in day out not to mention having to change diaper or stick a figure up someone backside just before lunch will become unappealing, for not much more increment.
Also giving "hard cash" to someone for a rise is much difficult, because someone is actually taking from someone else who aren't that keen on giving.
The govt still maintains their budget ... give out in one hand but get back from the other.
On the other hand, a reduction in tax rate will mean that there is less pressure to fall behind serious inflation (tax rate can be further adjusted or reduced) for NHS workers. Giving them the security they need. In the long run with low tax rate, this will encourage others to consider if they have the guts to join NHS. Meaning, NHS workers will have "less" headache when it comes to security of income. Yes, they will still get pay rise but perhaps different in addition to the tax reduction.
With becoming a low tax sector, the attraction is there for whoever are up to the job. They know they will be secured in life once they join because the low tax will encourage them to see further into future.
As for the govt, instead of giving cash, they are not giving anyone hard cash out now and they don't have to search for it to pay the NHS workers. The reduction means they are "not" giving away their hard tax money, instead they are just earning slightly less. i.e. money come back indirectly via their spending. Furthermore the attractiveness of this is that the NHS workers can decide what they want to spend it on without having the govt's hand in them before they got home.
What you are suggesting in terms of Pay Them Now is only a short term solution, sure pay them now. In the long run the system will have another melt down due to lack of NHS workers. Essentially, you approach is to push/pay them to join, but my suggestion is to pull the workers in. The former is force while the latter is own initiative because it is much nicer with low tax.
Seat belt wearing in 1980 was a minority. The car in question did not have the new fangled inertia reel belts so being belted meant you couldn’t lean over to adjust the radio etc.
What were you driving? My R-reg (1977) Fiesta had inertia-reel seatbelts and was sufficiently poverty-spec that it didn't even have a hole where a radio wasn't. I had to screw a caddy into the underside of the dashboard to fit one.
I’d dispute the “most”. Even my Brexity Tory parents are upset about what has happened to the public services.
... what they were instrumental in causing to happen to the public services, you mean. It didn't just spontaneously happen and come as a huge surprise. Brexit and squeals of "project fear" aside, the Tory attitude to the health service is hardly a well-guarded secret.
For decades that’s exactly what the past govts have done. Pay rise.
The problem is that they have been delivering real term pay cuts for the last decade.
Don’t let the Reform party drag you into their ultra low tax ideology by way of the NHS.
The problem is that they have been delivering real term pay cuts for the last decade.
That's why the NHS portfolio is toxic for ministers. They simply don't know or can't think out of the box or no will.
Don’t let the Reform party drag you into their low tax ideology by way of the NHS.
I don't listen to politicians coz I don't trust all of them.
This is an accumulation of political incompetence over decades.
Statements like this, and the other classic "all politicians are the same" are usually uttered by right-wing (mostly Tory) voters as they try to excuse who they vote for now - am I wrong @FunkyDunc?
Most Brits have absolutely no idea of the cost of health care and what it means if the NHS is replaced with a fully private service.
+1
But TBH a fairly large proportion know FA about most things - 52% in 2016 and about 43% in 2019.
... are usually uttered by right-wing (mostly Tory) voters ...
No, I genuinely Do Not trust politicians.
Not excusing anyone if they are wrong, they are.
I might vote for certain party but I have my reasons.
Remember, Boris is a Tory and somehow "everyone" seems to support him to go to "war" with Russia which I find weird especially from Labour supporters.
WTF are you wibbling in about chewkw?
Fundamentally income tax has sweet FA to do with any of this, it's far more straightforward. We have a government that doesn't value the labour of those people delivering essential public services, they just don't, they would rather start the process of forcing through legislation to take away people's right to strike than negotiate a fair pay settlement.
The last thing the UK needs to do is add complexity to it's tax system to solve an industrial dispute caused by a sustained period of governmental negligence.
The last thing the UK needs to do is add complexity to it’s tax system to solve an industrial dispute caused by a sustained period of governmental negligence.
If they cannot handle tax system they might as well don't govern.
If public has no confidence in finding ways apart from the only solution of pay rise then I guess we just have to live with it.
UK has, amongst the world, one of the most advanced tax system and if they can do that why can't they also change it? Rules and system are men made.
Statements like this, and the other classic “all politicians are the same” are usually uttered by right-wing (mostly Tory) voters as they try to excuse who they vote for now – am I wrong @FunkyDunc?
I don’t know I’ve not heard that before, you tell me? I’m flattered that you appear to think I have some insight to knowing that though.
Keir Starmer went to private school and then to Oxford. May as well be a Tory !
@chewkw our tax system isn't the most advanced, it's one of the most retrograde and certainly the most complex in the world. We have an enormously over complicated tax system, with sticking plasters on the sticking plasters on the bandages... All of which is kept in place specifically to facilitate tax avoidance by the trade and for the wealthy.
Like public sector pay or like NHS service provision, it needs a re-think and restructure. The NHS desperately needs the care system to be appropriately valued and resourced; the same applies to preventative healthcare, a truth that I think everyone on here probably recognises. Both will slowly but significantly reduce the burden on primary care.
An obvious taxation example: we have two parallel but not integrated income tax systems and rates; one, NICs, are specifically aimed at increasing the tax burden on the lower paid and the general working population.
We have an enormously over complicated tax system, with sticking plasters on the sticking plasters on the bandages… All of which is kept in place specifically to facilitate tax avoidance by the trade and for the wealthy.
This is a huge issue. It's a nightmare working it from the inside, and has generated an industry fiddling the system. Solving both would cut costs and raise more taxes.
Keir Starmer went to private school and then to Oxford. May as well be a Tory !
Well, he also went to Leeds Uni before doing his post grad at Oxford. Edited a Marxist magazine while at Uni as well IIRC, being such a Tory.
And his school was turned into a private school while he was there… could have left it once it was I suppose.
Chewkw - even if you were to give NHS staff tax breaks , the way accounting works is that you would still need funding for the full gross cost of the employee, so it wouldn’t really help giving tax reductions as tax reductions come after gross salary.
Free car parking for all staff should be a good start.
A useful graphic for the “all politicians are the same” crowd
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223967903260673?s=46&t=4UDfWcwBsTbFiJLIn2vGiQ
A useful graphic for the “all politicians are the same” crowd
I take your point and broadly agree with it, but the key word here is "are" and not "were." Can we compare Labour of today with Labour 10, 15, 20 years ago?
If they cannot handle tax system they might as well don’t govern.
Well They're not really fit to govern are they, but they do love a convoluted tax system..
If public has no confidence in finding ways apart from the only solution of pay rise then I guess we just have to live with it.
One way to put it I suppose, the other way is to say you're willing to pay what people are worth rather than trying to suppress their wages...
UK has, amongst the world, one of the most advanced tax system and if they can do that why can’t they also change it? Rules and system are men made.
Our tax system is "advanced" mostly to allow millionaires (like those in the cabinet) to pay less tax, it's a pretty simple banded system for us plebs. The solution to underpaid health workers isn't to keep their wages down and exempt them from taxes, the costs of administering that little wheeze would probably go a fair way towards paying people what they are owed.
I don't get why you're so keen to devalue health care workers, the last couple of years has demonstrated how utterly essential they are to this country.
Can we compare Labour of today with Labour 10, 15, 20 years ago?
Aha, see what you did there, no probably not, most of the front bench has changed of course they are led by SKS who was part of the Blair government, and is making some not unfamiliar speexhes (for another thread perhaps), what you can say of course is that there's a clear Patten (as those graphs present it) for how the NHS fares under Tory rule going back at least 30 years, with the only 'relief' coming under (new) Labour.
Of course looking at this the other way, why would we want to retain the Torries any longer? They've finally driven the NHS to breaking point. Unless you happen to have shares in HCA or BUPA how are the current lot improving your life or specifically access to healthcare? Labour do not come with any certainties over the outcomes, but the Tories definitely do they're not good...
The easy way to sort out pay rise for public sector is just link directly to inflation. Payrises over last 10 years would have been almost nothing but would now be 10+% which seems fair.
Then the discussion would be about banding and pay scales rather than pay rises I suppose.
That's fine looking forward, but you would also have to instantly uplift it to cover the 20% pay cut in real terms that nurses have already enjoyed over the past decade.
As for Labour saying that private capacity would have to be used to cut waiting lists, of course it would. The problem is so intense that every resource needs to be employed to deal with it. It's far from ideal, but the lists are dangerously long, and need to be shrunk as quickly as possible. Growing NHS capacity takes a long time.
The key thing is that there is a ongoing commitment to the founding principles of an NHS free at the point of delivery, rather than what the tories ultimately want, which is an insurance-based scheme designed to make profits for their mates via increased costs to us.
Aha, see what you did there, no probably not,
It wasn't supposed to be a trick, it was a genuine question.
There is no doubt in my mind that historically we have prospered far more greatly under Labour rule than Tory. I'm reasonably confident that we'd be better off today, if for no other reason that it could hardly be much worse.
I just think we need to be a little bit careful when drawing conclusions from graphs. Have party policies changed all that much? I don't know, but the people certainly have. Is it sensible to judge current parties based on decisions over the Iraq War, tuition fees and school milk? Again, I don't know the answer to that.
As for Labour saying that private capacity would have to be used to cut waiting lists, of course it would
Do you mean of course they would say that being corruptly influenced to favour private medicine which I would agree ( that of course they would say that) with or do you mean that involvement of private healthcare increases capacity which I very strongly disagree with. ?
Private medicine leaches off the NHS and increased private healthcare reduces NHS healthcare as they are fighting over the same pool of staff. Using private healthcare does not increase capacity overall. It reduces it. Its also very costly and thus sucks money out of the NHS. rather than putting money into private healthcare to reduce NHS waiting lists putting the same money into NHS and social care would produce a greater increase in capacity
It's more that the capacity is currently arranged the way it is. Capacity should be reinstated in the NHS as soon as possible - sorting the workforce issues is part of that - but this is not an overnight fix. In the meantime, there are a lot of people in pain needing elective surgery, diagnostic tests etc, and every available bit of immediately-available capacity needs to be harnessed to reduce that. It's like paying for agency staffing because your ward will cease to function without it. It's a bitter pill, you know it's not value for money, but what other option do you have because you can't magic up some NHS nurses for that shift?
You can argue that this just encourages private providers to suck up all that work, and may make the situation worse, but things are so bad that I can't see what the alternative is in the short (and probably medium) term.
The tipping point is if Labour does not intend to fight to preserve the basic funding model of socialised healthcare in the UK, and falls in line with those who want to introduce an insurance-based model instead. You know this is the direction of travel under the Conservatives, their think tanks and funders are not shy about it.
There's a real circular argument here.
There is a relatively fixed pool of suitably qualified clinicians in the country, the vast majority of which currently do at least some if not most of their work within the NHS
Just because a tory related bigwig gets a contract to provide a private clinical service, the clinicans don't magically appear, they need to come from the same pool.
you have to ask why the pool of clinicians might want to work for private providers. Its very rarely because they themselves see the vast profits people here are talking about. You would also, i suggest, struggle to find one of those clinicians that believes that a private system is better than a properly funded nationalised system.
I think you would probably find that working for the private providers ( be they bupa hospitals or nursing agencies ) allow those clinicians to be better paid to do their same job in a nicer, less stressful environment, at a more realistic pace and without the pressures of understaffing. i'm fairly sure most of those clinicians would rather their NHS day jobs allowed them to work that way.
Those "pay and conditions" are not things that can only happen in a private environment, its just that they arent happening in the current national government funded environment.
Absolutely, it's a circular problem (which is part of the reason that it feels a bit intractable) . Fixing pay and conditions and the NHS working environment has to start on day one of a Labour government, but these clinicians won't get tempted back in weeks or even months, and the process of digging into the backlog of elective ops etc also needs to start on day one.
The UK has squandered the goodwill and appetite for public service of thousands of staff who have moved to private providers or just left clinical roles entirely. Many did it purely out of self-preservation. A lot of them will take a lot of convincing to come back.
Agree Ceepers
However before lockdown family FD went to Canada for a summer holiday. Part of that summer holiday was for Mrs FD to look at a hospital in Vancouver.
Here she earns ~£120k there she would earn equivalent to approx £1.75m
There were a number of reasons we didnt make the jump, and although we are not half has communist as people on STW, it didnt sit right with us both, the whole you can get treatment if you can pay for it.
But our lives would be so much nicer in every way, I would see my wife a lot more frequently, she would be less stressed and less worried about the harm that she sees happening every day.
However before lockdown family FD went to Canada for a summer holiday. Part of that summer holiday was for Mrs FD to look at a hospital in Vancouver.
Here she earns ~£120k there she would earn equivalent to approx £1.75m
There were a number of reasons we didnt make the jump, and although we are not half has communist as people on STW, it didnt sit right with us both, the whole you can get treatment if you can pay for it.
But our lives would be so much nicer in every way, I would see my wife a lot more frequently, she would be less stressed and less worried about the harm that she sees happening every day.
I admire your morals.
Many more than I have.
She got any single attractive colleagues into mountain biking? 😉
Here she earns ~£120k there she would earn equivalent to approx £1.75m
'ang on... REALLY??!!
ooh!
DrP
@funkydunc I got very close to emigrating straight after i qualified for similar reasons ( plus the proximity to snowy mountains ) but i met my wife and she wasnt so keen, Long time ago but the discrepancies were similar orders of magnitude back then.
at the risk of a tangent and for anyone interested, Everything i outlined in my post above is basically the reason there is a dearth of NHS dentistry except that for dentistry, practices are small businesses where individual dentists have bet their own house to secure funding to exist and the profit margins in the private side are hugely lower than people think ( Boots and Specsavers bought into dentistry in the 90's / 2000's then sold up as they couldn't make anywhere near the profit they expected!)
There was a recent report that suggested that running a purely nhs practice was almost unviable given the level of money available and the increase in costs of providing the service over the last ten years. In most cases across the country, a practices private side subsidises their nhs provision now. That's the reason anyone at a "MYDentist" will have had a hard sell of private things recently. As a company they hoovered up a lot of NHS money by offering to do things cheaply for the NHS but are now finding their are unable to balance the books.
anyway carry on everyone
<Dr P is currently out of office, researching clinical opportunities close to sweet, sweet Canadian singletrack>
Genuine question and NOT trying to be provocative...
Do NHS staff still get their gold plated final salary pensions and early retirement (55?) perks or is that all a thing of the past?
Salary and benefits, not just salary.
Slight distraction
Here she earns ~£120k there she would earn equivalent to approx £1.75m
That's a huge difference but then their property price is also extremely expensive beyond ordinary mortals as was seen recently when their PM banned non-resident from buying property there.
Everything is more expensive there if I can recall.
UK is cold enough, I will freeze to death in the Canadian winter.
Do NHS staff still get their gold plated final salary pensions and early retirement (55?) perks or is that all a thing of the past?
Not even close to that.
In fact, I'm pretty sure the NHS has ever had the early retirement at 55 thing. The pension isn't bad but it's not the amazing gold plated pension that some parts of the press would have you believe.
Do NHS staff still get their gold plated final salary pensions and early retirement (55?) perks or is that all a thing of the past?
Don't think a FS pension has been offered to new recruits since about 2015, and only people who were relatively close to retirement avoided being moved to that scheme. Don't believe that the 2015 scheme offers any early retirement benefits which would make it 'gold plated'.
I think we'd be hearing a lot more about it from government types if these benefits still existed.
I take your point and broadly agree with it, but the key word here is “are” and not “were.” Can we compare Labour of today with Labour 10, 15, 20 years ago?
Probably! Members of my family still go on about how Blair was basically a tory in a red tie, not really Labour, said any old shite to get elected, a total letdown to the left etc etc.
And 25 years on, many people say exactly the same about Starmer...
...and don't forget that those lucky enough to still get the good FS pension are paying in a _lot_ to bank it.
