Answer: "5 more years of Gordon Brown"

Spartacus_Mills

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You should come and talk to front line NHS staff........

They may like to put you right on a few facts.

Targets, targets, targets being one of them.

And the fines for not hitting them, that result in what?

Yes, that's right less money to spend on patient care.

Which numpty in Whitehall dreamt that one up........

No Labour cuts to front line services !!!!!

Stand by for more of the same over the next few years. The money is not there and this is inevitable I guess. However the PFI debts cannot be escaped.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7529454/Hospital-wards-to-shut-in-secret-NHS-cuts.html

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.

The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.


Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.
The proposals could lead to:

• 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.
• The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
• A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
• Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The plans are contained in a series of internal NHS documents uncovered by The Daily Telegraph.

The final details of the plans are not due to be announced until the autumn, well after the country has gone to the polls for the general election.

The Conservatives and health campaigners said the public deserved to know the true extent of cuts at their local surgeries and hospitals before voting.

Last year all English health authorities were ordered by Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, to reconsider their plans after the recession forced the Government to freeze health spending from April next year.

This left a ''black hole’’ of up to £20 billion in health budgets up to 2014, prompting the drawing up of new proposals by the 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs).

They had until Friday to submit their plans to Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary. He is under pressure from the Treasury to show how money will be saved to help bring down Britain’s record £167 billion deficit.

In Wednesday’s Budget, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, repeated that the £20 billion would come through “efficiency savings” and not key services.
Documents produced by several of the SHAs show how the cuts are, in fact, expected to fall on hospital services.

In the South East Coast region, which covers Surrey, Kent and Sussex, up to £1.6 billion must be saved.

A document marked “restricted” and circulated among SHA board members suggests 10,000 of the region’s 100,000 NHS workers may lose their jobs.

“The new financial environment demands that the trend in workforce growth must be reversed,” it said, adding bosses must reduce employee numbers by 10 per cent “or further”.

The document said staffing in the acute sector, covering hospitals, “can be expected to decline faster and further” than elsewhere.
Job losses will be “starting in the coming year”, it states. Mr Brown has repeatedly promised Labour will not start making significant cuts to public spending until 2011. A spokesman for the South East Coast SHA said the document was a discussion paper and not a final plan.

In London, which faces £5 billion in cuts, documents show managers believe up to £2 billion can be saved from community care budgets, which cover GPs’ surgeries. This would include “changing how patients get in contact with and receive services, such as through greater use of the internet and email”.

An internal presentation by NHS Yorkshire and the Humber, which spans Sheffield, York, Hull and north Lincolnshire, made similar suggestions. The SHA, which is expected to make about £2 billion in cuts, proposed directing more patients to “teleservices such as NHS Direct”. Meanwhile, £450 million could be saved in London by banning clinical procedures “that have little or no benefit to those receiving them, for example some joint replacements”.

NHS North West, which oversees Greater Manchester and Liverpool, is expected to make about £2 billion savings. It is preparing to close an A&E unit in Rochdale during evenings before scrapping it altogether next year.
In the East region, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, up to £2 billion is to be cut. The SHA proposes shifting services out of hospitals and making social workers take over some treatments. It is estimated that savings of about £2.4 billion will need to be made by NHS West Midlands, £2 billion in the South West, £1.3 billion in South Central, £1 billion in the North East and £800 million in the East Midlands.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We will be clear with trusts that they must not make short-term cuts that harm patient care.”

Emy1501

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Very nice. Have waiting times gone up or gone down?

Don't get me started about waiting lists. I have been waiting for a referral for my son for a year now thats right a year. He should have been seen in 4 months but oh due to cuts who know when he will be seen so look like we will have to go private.

Wife has also had a number of appointments cancelled over the last year and another son we gave up and went private when we were told the referral would be over 15months:eek:

I suspect waiting lists have gone down because most people just give up and go private rather than waste their time with our joke of a NHS service.

peterg1965

I see Ms estelle hasn't appeared again for a while, she lobs in her socialist hand grenades and disappears....

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The NHS is people. The issue is the way that the staff are treated. Good staff are able still to emigrate to Oz quite easily and many do.

The issue is also the way that the patients are treated as well. The NHS has become a hugely inefficient and cumbersome 'conveyor belt' where patients are often treated with little dignity and respect. Nurses are unable to cope, are stressed and morale is appaling - the nurses at my wife's hosptial have been threatened with disciplinary action if they are found to be responsible, or at fault, for a patient who breaches target times. That is abhorrent and a sad idictment on the NHS managers. Don't think Stafford General is a one off, I suspect many hospitals are managed in a similar manner.

Of course, this would be vehemently denied by the SoS and his sycophant staff and those that closer chaperone him when he visits the 'front line'.

LizEstelle

The plain fact is that the everyday experience of everyday people has got better in many ways, whether from the fall in crime, from the fall in waiting times for hospital procedures or from the minimum wage etc etc etc.

The only thing combatting this is the perception of these matters as fuelled by the slow drip of reactionary poison from the Murdochite media.

To believe these, you would think that hospital waiting times had actually gone up and there was a mugger waiting around every corner to kill you.

These 'facts' are swallowed avidly by the rabid Tebbitry on MSE like mother's milk. I advise anyone with half a brain to think of what their own experience has been under Labour, rather than be frightened by all the scare tactics.

You want relative stability, go for Brown. You want a parcel of Hooray Henries with an innate hatred of public services and who, self-avowedly, would have left the financial system to go down the tubes, by all means go for Camertoff...

Graham_Devon

LizEstelle wrote: »

The plain fact is that the everyday experience of everyday people has got better in many ways, whether from the fall in crime, from the fall in waiting times for hospital procedures or from the minimum wage etc etc etc.

The only thing combatting this is the perception of these matters as fuelled by the slow drip of reactionary poison from the Murdochite media.

To believe these, you would think that hospital waiting times had actually gone up and there was a mugger waiting around every corner to kill you.

These 'facts' are swallowed avidly by the rabid Tebbitry on MSE like mother's milk. I advise anyone with half a brain to think of what their own experience has been under Labour, rather than be frightened by all the scare tactics.

You want relative stability, go for Brown. You want a parcel of Hooray Henries with an innate hatred of public services and who, self-avowedly, would have left the financial system to go down the tubes, by all means go for Camertoff...

You really are quite annoying.

You take the "facts" as they are presented to you and then simply close your ears to anything else you do not wish to hear.

Crime figures have been completely overhauled. Car crime is no longer included, stealing of a car stereo is no longer a crime, but an insurance matter.

There has been an absolutely MASSIVE shift to on the spot fines, rather than recording of a crime that will go into the figures. This is absolutely huge.

To take an extract from how the figures are reported....

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Police recorded crime statistics, like any administrative data, will be affected by the rules governing the recording of data, systems in place and operational decisions on the allocation of resources. They need to be interpreted in this light, and where appropriate this is commented on in our publications.
Police recorded crime statistics cover all ‘notifiable’ offences recorded by the police. This does not mean all criminal offences, as almost all the more minor summary offences are excluded (even though the police may record them for their own investigations). The term ‘notifiable’ covers offences that are notified to the Home Office, and they are collectively known as ‘recorded crime’.[/FONT]

This has changed drastically from how crime figures were previously recorded. The above is from the Home Office.

You can do anything with figures. But let's not pretend that just because the way figures are reported has changed, the figures HAVE actually come down. The sad thing is, they may have come down in reality, but we really wouldn't be able to tell, as they have been skewed to make them look more favourable. Therefore, apart from the forced comparison between labour and tory years, we can't make a true comparison.

What you like to do, it seems, is take figures from tory years, and take these skewed figures from labour years. Ignore the skew, ignore the dataset, and just come up with the answer of "crime down". Then you try to tell us about these facts in a holier than thou manner, putting across the feeling that you know far more and were all idiots.

Generali

LizEstelle wrote: »

The plain fact is that the everyday experience of everyday people has got better in many ways, whether from the fall in crime, from the fall in waiting times for hospital procedures or from the minimum wage etc etc etc.

The only thing combatting this is the perception of these matters as fuelled by the slow drip of reactionary poison from the Murdochite media.

To believe these, you would think that hospital waiting times had actually gone up and there was a mugger waiting around every corner to kill you.

These 'facts' are swallowed avidly by the rabid Tebbitry on MSE like mother's milk. I advise anyone with half a brain to think of what their own experience has been under Labour, rather than be frightened by all the scare tactics.

You want relative stability, go for Brown. You want a parcel of Hooray Henries with an innate hatred of public services and who, self-avowedly, would have left the financial system to go down the tubes, by all means go for Camertoff...

Nurse! She's out of bed again.

abaxas

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Very nice. Have waiting times gone up or gone down?

The problem is that waiting times makes no difference.

What matters is getting treatment.

mbga9pgf

LizEstelle wrote: »

The plain fact is that the everyday experience of everyday people has got better in many ways, whether from the fall in crime, from the fall in waiting times for hospital procedures or from the minimum wage etc etc etc.

The only thing combatting this is the perception of these matters as fuelled by the slow drip of reactionary poison from the Murdochite media.

To believe these, you would think that hospital waiting times had actually gone up and there was a mugger waiting around every corner to kill you.

These 'facts' are swallowed avidly by the rabid Tebbitry on MSE like mother's milk. I advise anyone with half a brain to think of what their own experience has been under Labour, rather than be frightened by all the scare tactics.

You want relative stability, go for Brown. You want a parcel of Hooray Henries with an innate hatred of public services and who, self-avowedly, would have left the financial system to go down the tubes, by all means go for Camertoff...

The problem with rabid socialists like yourself liz, is that you dont seem to understand whilst all the things you talk about would be really nice to have, and no-one can doubt that, but unless you can pay for it, without bankrupting the nation in the process, it is only going to remain a want. Sorry, but thats the way it is. If we cant pay for it, we cant have it.

Labour are all about the short term. I would LOVE for them to have another 5 years in power, purely to demonstrate what happens when they stick around when the difficult decisions need to be made are made.

What would YOU do if the only way to prevent state bankrupcy was by cutting the NHS budget in half?

Spartacus_Mills

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You really are quite annoying.

Annoying, not in the slightest but she is highly comical. The notion that all who are opposed to Labour are critical, unthinking, lemmings as she implies is really funny because that is exactly her approach to taking on face value everything Labour says.

My own experience of Labour is a good first term, 97-01, and then two very bad terms. Including :-

The erosion of civil liberties in the name of fighting terror.

The ruination of a glittering economic legacy through poor regulation and management of the financial markets.

An ever increasing burden of the state on small businesses.

An over reliance on target based politics which means manipulation of data and targets rather than focussing on delivery.

The creation of a large dependency culture in the economically inactive and the public sector.

The destruction of final salary pensions.

Having to pay for parking in a hospital car park and fines for people who overstay by a few minutes.

The colossal rises in council tax due to central government inadequately funding the local councils.

The explosion of PFI and the debt that has been stored up for future generations.

Incompetent moron Gordon Brown ran a deficit in the good years in excess of £30bn per annum.

There is much more. Labour do not deserve to get in next time. They have been a disgrace whatever unthinking astroturfers like Liz Estelle say.

A._Badger

You forgot Brown flushing away £7 billion by selling the UK's gold, Spartacus. That was an act of treachery.

The man isn't just 'an incompetent moron' - he's actively malign.