Public sector pay freeze/Inflation calculation

westernpromise

Nick_C wrote: »

I popped into my GPs a little over a year ago to try to get an appointment for a minor problem. I got an appointment two hours later. I was at the hospital that afternoon for blood tests, and I saw a specialist two weeks later.

Earlier this year, my brother punctured a cyst on his hand to drain it. It got infected. He went to his GP. He was sent straight to hospital where he was admitted and kept in for two nights for observation in case of sepsis.

My 92 year old uncle is about to go into hospital to have a heart valve replacement! ( A transcatheter aortic valve implantation that avoids the need for a general anaesthetic).

I hear horror stories on the news about the NHS but my personal experience, and those of friends and family, have all been excellent.

Oh, that's nice. Nobody you know personally has starved to death caked in poo in an NHS hospital, so everything's fine. I wish you'd tell the staff. All they can do is bleat about how it's in meltdown and nothing but big pay rises funded by other people will fix it.

westernpromise

GreatApe wrote: »

Best to just concentrate on tech we are not going to change the NHS faster than tech is going to change healthcare

Hopefully over the next 20-40 years robots will start doing operations and tending to the sick and software will do diagnoses. That way we can have very cheap high quality healthcare with far fewer nurses and doctors

Nah. We'll still "need" doctors watching the robots. On full pay. Otherwise the NHS will go into meltdown, innit?

Moby

westernpromise wrote: »

What's been most entertaining about this debate is how it has exposed the full scale of the tribal leftoid's sense of entitlement. The left doesn't just feel entitled to literally limitless quantities of other people's money. It also feels entitled to immunity from criticism.

As far as the left is concerned, it is actually beyond the pale to criticise the public sector in any way. If the police are incompetent, it's because they need even more of other people's money and the evil greedy taxpayers won't give it to them so they deserve the crime. When the saintly NHS kills people like a Dickensian workhouse it's because it needs even more of other people's money and the evil greedy taxpayers won't give it to them so they deserve the filth and squalor. When social workers (if I may be excused the oxymoron) allow children to be killed and raped in care, well, it's very stressful for the poor workers and they need even more of other people's money and the evil greedy taxpayers won't give it to them so the kids deserve the abuse.

It's really quite repellent. There are certain subjects that send the left apoplectic with rage and that pious censoriousness they do so well. Criticise charities, the public sector or the green movement and you provoke their instant snivelling money-grubbing ire.

So come on lefties, prove me wrong. I would like to make a sincere criticism of some aspect of any of these. Show that you're not just snivellers after money: cite something about the NHS' staff, or about civil servants, or about Shelter the non-housing "charity" that you think is to their discredit.

You will be unable to. You'd choke.

From what I see the poster who is 'apoplectic with rage' is you. You spend your days ranting about the 'good guys' in society. I suppose the idea of 'public service' is an alien concept to you. Your straw man arguments also completely fail to acknowledge the abuses you allude to are usually the result of cutbacks in services or the fact that services have been contacted out to the 'provider that gives the value for money option.....e.g the care company that pays carers the minimum wage and no travelling expenses to workers to attend to terminal care patients at home for 15 min slots. This is wrong and completely inadequate.....but you get what you pay for! Now here's a simple fact for you...The last Labour Government increased it's annual budget to the NHS by 5 billion a year and public satisfaction with the NHS increased dramatically. This Govmt is increasing the NHS budget by 2 billion a year. Look at what is happening as a result. Day after day you are told this but you prefer to believe that we are all incompetent parasites. I suppose that's the easier option because it lets people like you off the hook from paying your due contribution. To you it's all a conspiracy....... the public services, charities, doctors, lefties, police, social workers are all to get you ..........you being such a virtuous gentle soul who always pays his taxes and all:eek:

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

Nah. We'll still "need" doctors watching the robots. On full pay. Otherwise the NHS will go into meltdown, innit?

That is quite likely
Even if a machine and software could do 99% of things twice as good the profession would argue it is unsafe unproven not always reliable etc. I don't think that will apply just to the NHS it will also apply to the USA healthcare system.

Perhaps people will be able to avoid the NHS much more than today.
A software GP + a mini blood test machine might be able to take over almost all of general practice.

Software will take over for sure at some point human doctors even the best ones are too limited.
Software and hardware will make testing much quicker and easier and cheaper.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

That is quite likely
Even if a machine and software could do 99% of things twice as good the profession would argue it is unsafe unproven not always reliable etc. I don't think that will apply just to the NHS it will also apply to the USA healthcare system.

Perhaps people will be able to avoid the NHS much more than today.
A software GP + a mini blood test machine might be able to take over almost all of general practice.

Software will take over for sure at some point human doctors even the best ones are too limited.
Software and hardware will make testing much quicker and easier and cheaper.

My friends parents are both doctors who run their own practice. The father was telling me how 75% if all apppintments are purely for reassurance purposes. The rest for everything else. If you can even just have the software and hardware do all the tests that GPs do for reassurance purposes, you free up the need for a large number of GPs.

Plus with the software you have no biases and you have access to a vast amount of data to better diagnose. And this only ever gets better with time. The only thing that may need intervention is if there is a new disease or bug or virus but even that can easily be implemented in the software by way of a software update. You just miss the data part.

zagubov

I think David Mitchell summed up my own thoughts on this better than I could.

BobQ

westernpromise wrote: »

Nor have you. You just came up with an unsubstantiated assertion that the civil service - which, as bloated as it is, is still only an eighth of the public teat - dismisses 2,000 people a year, as though that's a really big deal.

No I said that Annual Civil Service Survey stated that 2000+ people were dismissed from the CS each year. I had assumed you were capable of googling that.

[URL="ttps://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/adhocs/005122civilserviceemploymentretirementsanddismissalsinthecivilservice2007to2015"]ttps://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/adhocs/005122civilserviceemploymentretirementsanddismissalsinthecivilservice2007to2015[/URL]

If - for the sake of argument - we accept that's even true...

The ONS commissioned it and the survey is independent so there is no argument about it!

.It's half of a per cent.

It is roughly that. This started because you said that no public servants were ever dismissed. I simply quoted evidence that in one small part of the public sector (ie the civil service) there were 2000 more than the zero you claimed.

In 2005 the public sector was 5.7 million versus 22.5 million in the productive sector. If we take your 0.5% as typical of all the public sector (and if we can't, I don't know why you brought it up), that says that the private sector must be sacking people at something like three times the rate that occurs in the public sector in order for 1.2% to be the average across both.

I am not sure you can say it is 0.5% in the public sector, just in the civil service. I only brought it up because you said no public servants were ever sacked.

But 1.2% seems a plausible figure for the whole of the employment sector.

That is an utter scandal and it suggests in fact that the difference, 1% of the public sector, ought to be sacked every year, and would be in the private sector, but aren't.

What do you think a dismissal is? You sack people for incompetence or poor attendance or stealing, not as part of a restructuring plan which creates redundancies. That is fine if you see a Carillion like firm running the police force.

That's around 6,000 doctors, police officers, schoolteachers, and tax inspectors who are so inept they should be sacked - but keep their job and their pension.

You seem to have lost the plot. You assert they are inept but what evidence do you have for this? Sacking people does not affect their accrued pension.

I see little point on commenting on your list when you have failed to do the most basic research before asserting no public servants are ever sacked.

BobQ

westernpromise wrote: »

Funnily enough, as well as not sacking people for incompetence, the public sector also tolerates a great deal of phoney sickness: the incidence of absence die to sickness is 2.9% versus 1.7% for productive sector workers (https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/sicknessabsenceinthelabourmarket/2016).

The bile that you pedal towards the public sector is quite pathetic. Try looking behind the statistics.

For example by your own choice of statistics

- The public sector is predominantly composed of large employers: large employers have statistically more sick absences for all sorts of reasons. Large employers often have open plan offices where infections spread, so they tell staff to go home to prevent infections spreading to other workers.

- Woman have statistically more sick absences than men. Which sector employs a higher proportion of women.

- Most public sector workers are employees which have higher sickness levels than the self employed which are a significant part of the private sector.

Your use of these statistics is simplistic, and similar to the slapdash way you demonise the public sector

antrobus

BobQ wrote: »

The bile that you pedal towards the public sector is quite pathetic. Try looking behind the statistics.

For example by your own choice of statistics

- The public sector is predominantly composed of large employers: large employers have statistically more sick absences for all sorts of reasons. Large employers often have open plan offices where infections spread, so they tell staff to go home to prevent infections spreading to other workers.

- Woman have statistically more sick absences than men. Which sector employs a higher proportion of women.

- Most public sector workers are employees which have higher sickness levels than the self employed which are a significant part of the private sector.

Your use of these statistics is simplistic, and similar to the slapdash way you demonise the public sector

Maybe large employers have more sick absences because the public sector is composed of large employers.

Maybe women have more sick absences because proportionally more of them work in the public sector.

The simplistic use of statistics is clearly infectious.:)