Mervyn King:Labour not responsible for crash

CLAPTON

prowla wrote: »

What we can say is that the hospitals focused on the indicators; for instance getting people off waiting lists (maybe onto other waiting lists?).

It's like Heisenberg - measuring something has the effect of changing the thing which you are measuring.

Did the number of doctors and nurses increase under Labour? (Certainly the number of administrators did; allegedly the management spend quadrupled under Labour.)

The number of doctors and nurse increased under labour
the number of doctors being trained (new training Unis ) increased under labour.

The wait to be referred to a consultant decreased under labour.

Of course the figures were fiddled but the under lying service improved.

As I said the service improved a lot under labour although I doubt we could have achieved that at lower cost.

StevieJ

CLAPTON wrote: »

T

Of course the figures were fiddled but the under lying service improved.
.

That is politics

pollypenny

Gangaweed wrote: »

No one says that labour created the recession. They did, however, make sure that the UK was very unprepared when it struck. Record welfare claimants, huge structural budget deficit, record private debt.

The list could go on.

This is labour's true legacy.

Have you forgotten why there were so many welfare claimants?

Thatcher's short-term philosophy, lack of of investment in industries and closure of others. Her enthusiastic embracing of deregulation of banking was led to the free for all from which we suffer now.

Brown's introduction of WTC has proved costly. However, it's a costly subsidy to employers who don't pay a living wage.

The country is becoming more unequal every month.

BobQ

Gangaweed wrote: »

True apologist. Your posts are still as stupid as they were 4 years ago.

At least he has retained his identity in those years. You appear to replace identities more frequently, presumably as your credibility under one wanes.

leveller2911

pollypenny wrote: »

Have you forgotten why there were so many welfare claimants?

Thatcher's short-term philosophy, lack of of investment in industries and closure of others. Her enthusiastic embracing of deregulation of banking was led to the free for all from which we suffer now.

Brown's introduction of WTC has proved costly. However, it's a costly subsidy to employers who don't pay a living wage.

The country is becoming more unequal every month.

The problem under Labour was rather than skill the nations manual workforce they coveted the City of London at the expense of vocational training...... Nu-labour have a lot to answer for in this respect. Sadly it really hasn't got any better under the Tories.

Why spend moent training a workforce when you get £millions from the City for doing squat all.........The Governments couldn't be more short sighted.

Koicarp

prowla wrote: »

Did the number of doctors and nurses increase under Labour?

On the ward I worked on when qualifying as a nurse in the early 90's there were 2 nurses and one care assistant to care for 24 children, often some of them very sick and needing HDU care- but there wasn't such a thing. Dr's were routinely rostered to work 26 hour shifts.
In 2010 the same ward was running on 3 nurses, 1 nursery nurse and two care assistants for the same number of patients, but we also had access to 2 HDU beds (all district generals set them up under labour) where 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 care could be provided if required. Dr's were rostered to work 8 hour shifts. Staffing is now falling again.

BobQ

leveller2911 wrote: »

The problem under Labour was rather than skill the nations manual workforce they coveted the City of London at the expense of vocational training...... Nu-labour have a lot to answer for in this respect. Sadly it really hasn't got any better under the Tories.

Why spend moent training a workforce when you get £millions from the City for doing squat all.........The Governments couldn't be more short sighted.

Your last para is absurd. You need to raise income (from taxing the city or whoever ) to spend on providing training.

You clearly fail to consider the evidence objectively.

Labour was not perfect but they improved the experience of the average person when using the health and education systems. Labour did many things to improve human rights, introduced Equality Legislation, Minimum Wage and its tax policies were redistributive, reducing child poverty,

I agree that some things could have been done more efficiently and the expansion of the university sector could have been done much more effectively.

Upskilling older manual workers is a difficult problem when the jobs area declining. I agree Labour focussed on younger people, but the New Deal did undertake re-skilling of people at all working ages.

Obviously, if you judge any party on one issue you can pick something to disagree with.

prowla

The numbers game is an interesting one; perhaps another measure is the number of beds, which fell by under NuLab:



We also see an increase in the NHS staff under NuLab:



(The above are from http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/general-election-2010/faqs)

So, we had falling beds and increasing staff.

And it is observed that the biggest staff increase was in managerial/admin roles. Why is that?

Incidentally, one thing I don't understand is why doctors have to work the long hours - surely it would make more sense to have more doctors who do work a regular length shift? It would mean that (a) they aren't tired and thus avoid the knock-on effects, and (b) it helps the employment numbers?

Further on the numbers game, we are seeing more obese people (who presumably need more demand for doctors):



The numbers game is certainly fascinating, and you can't take any of the figures at face value (ie. does more doctors = better care?).

Masomnia

I do think the NHS needed more spending, but much of it was wasted. I think also that a lot of that is down to the culture of he NHS, rather than who was in power in particular. A few years ago I worked briefly for an NHS Trust in training, and as an example off the top of my head it used to be the case that a nurse would ring up needing access to a journal. No problem they'd say, buy the subscription, £a few hundred spent, nurse probably only needed one article. Now they're having to justify all these decisions, and all this spending. One tiny example in one Trust, but extrapolate that over multiple departments and multiple Trusts and these little extravagances add up to massive waste, far more than Mail making headlines about lightbulbs being replaced or whatever.

I think the reforms that the current lot are introducing are addressing it to an extent, but it'll be a while before we know for sure.

Obesity I could go about at length too...

BobQ

prowla wrote: »

The numbers game is an interesting one; perhaps another measure is the number of beds,
We also see an increase in the NHS staff under NuLab:
which fell by under NuLab:

(The above are from http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/general-election-2010/faqs)

So, we had falling beds and increasing staff.

And it is observed that the biggest staff increase was in managerial/admin roles. Why is that?

Incidentally, one thing I don't understand is why doctors have to work the long hours - surely it would make more sense to have more doctors who do work a regular length shift? It would mean that (a) they aren't tired and thus avoid the knock-on effects, and (b) it helps the employment numbers?

Further on the numbers game, we are seeing more obese people (who presumably need more demand for doctors):

The numbers game is certainly fascinating, and you can't take any of the figures at face value (ie. does more doctors = better care?).

The reason why we need less beds is partly on the graph. We do more operations without the need for overnight stays so they may not even need a bed. Others might need a bed for a few hours rather than an overnight stay. Maternity and Geriatric procedures are more effective so have less need for longer stays. We no longer treat learning disabilities as something best addressed in a hospital.

If you want to "blame" Labour for reducing beds give them credit for investing in the technologies that enable less beds to be used and enabling more patients to be treated per bed.I suggest that if you do more operations you may well need more staff?

Fair point about the number of managers increasing, not sure of the reasons although I think if the total number of staff increases you may need more managers.

Like you I am concerned about all these managers, but one of the things I noted two years ago when I accompanied a patient who was lying on a trolley outside the A&E room. I was standing a few metres form a whiteboard which had two senior nurses debating the reasons why the patient I was with could not be admitted at that point. Their discussion (which had gone on when my friend was second and third in the trolley queue about those patients) was not about medical issues, it was purely about why a porter was not available, why a bed upstairs was blocked, when they would get a break, and many other things. I recall thinking that this was something a manager should be sorting out and not wasting the time of the clinical staff.