The disappearance of the NHS

Thanks, * Anniezzz* . Now, what do we find today? That Osborne has suddenly found extra cash for the NHS and some roadworks. Does he seriously think that the voting public are going to believe this blatant attempt at buying votes? Pumping extra cash into a haemorrhaging NHS is only a temporary patch. Digging tunnels around Stonehenge may well provide a convenient short-term dumping ground for other national problems, but I suppose all this spin has only got to last until after the May election. Hopefully, by that time the present coalition itself will be consigned to landfill. Incompetent, crass and hypocritical as HM's Opposition appear to have been they are the only hope for the interests of ordinary people. So Ed M and his mates had better get their act together. Our futures and that of the NHS depends on them. They are our only hope.

Have had a quick look at the link djen - interesting to see which ones are PFI schemes.

Good post papaoscar

Looking back over the sometimes turbulent waters of life there have been occasional periods of stability and lighthouses pointing the way towards improvements for us common people. Things like better public and personal health standards, for example. In that respect the NHS has been the most important contributor, but it has an Achilles heel - it depends on public funding, and that is open to manipulation by devious politicians. There are no absolutes in all this, and even I have to admit that there are some good Tories (grinding of teeth!) and bad Socialists and I am aware that the pendulum of our political system exposes us to the excesses of both varieties. In the meantime our little ship of state is exposed to great forces way out of its control. So, yes, the country is in a financial mess, principally as a result of international shenanagins over which the UK government has little influence, but I will do everything I can to prevent the NHS vanishing under the waves of greed and selfishness represented by our present slippery administration.

Of course they can get the money to save the NHS. All they have to do is ensure their rich friends pay their taxes properly. Dead easy. But they will not do that, will they, as they need their votes.

djen I will agree wholeheartedly that tax dodgers should be made to pay their dues, but I don't think the numbers of rich avoiding taxes is going to make much difference to the outcome of an election. I think putting up the top rate of income tax would make more people try to avoid paying it or move abroad, so would be a fruitless exercise.

POGS, the thing about PFI is it goes on forever, so even if the link is 2007, the Welsh are still paying for it and will be for another 20 years or so.

So how has the government now found £2 billion to put into the NHS?

Oh, it hasn't, has it? £750 million was already there, and another £1.1 billion is a one-off sum from the banks that rigged the Libor rate.

Of course they can get the money to save the NHS. All they have to do is ensure their rich friends pay their taxes properly. Dead easy. But they will not do that, will they, as they need their votes.

How strange to believe what an incoming government says. " No top down reorganisation of the NHS." Do you remember that?

Thanks for the link djen I will look later, better to read and digest than skim and get the wrong end of the stick.
Meanwhile a pile of washing and cleaning awaits after the weekend visitors.

POGS is right about an incoming government not wanting to have to introduce austerity measures - it takes a brave government to do so and not continue on the merry road of making everyone feel well off and happy even if it is all funded by credit.

Low paid wages are topped up by tax credits so the taxpayer is funding this so yes, low wages are not good for the economy. I know there are people struggling but watching scenes on tv of horrendous Black Friday and hearing people say 'what can I buy the DGC for Christmas, they have everything?' makes me wonder if everything is black as painted. Yes, there is poverty, there always has been and there always will be unfortunately. But a lot of it is relative.

I stand by what I said. The legacy left by Labour was debt and more debt. My MIL used to say that one term of a Labour Government getting us into a financial mess took two terms of a Conservative government to put right. So by her reckoning it will take 26 years to put right. Labour did leave a legacy of debt to the country last time.
The bankers caused a financial crisis which made it all so much worse - but even without that Labour would have left the country in deep debt. No more boom and bust, though, so that was OK .

The NHS was not safe in Labour's hands despite what they claim and would not be again. Throwing money into a bottomless pit is not the answer, neither is Ed's 'mansion tax' which would raise barely one week's running costs.
papa's idea of, I think, taking it out of government is worth thinking about - but does that mean a huge, cumbersome quango-type organisation which would squander public money even more?

I really don't know what the answer is as far as the NHS is concerned - if I pretended to know I could be a politician.

Eloethan. Durhamjen et all

No surprise I don't, agree with you.

The last election was going to be nightmare for the incoming government, nobody wants austerity it is damaging to the government of any colour but the purse strings had to be tightened and a government of red, blue, green or yellow would have to act or be assessed as economically inept.

The prolific spending by Labour over 13 years running alongside the world banking crash caused the UK to have the biggest financial debt in Europe. Labour made this country a ' Basket Case'. Again!

The deficit in 2010/2011 was £134 Billion. It is now 2014/15 estimated to be £87 Billion. Still a massive figure. I dread to think where we would be if Balls were still in charge. What did the famous note say from the stupid Lyam Byrne, something like " Good luck, there's no money left". Summed it up to the country that one, another own goal…

PFI and privatisation are never going to go away. Why? Because the alternative is for the tax payer to fund all projects and WE ARE BROKE. Nada, Zilch, not a pot to p - - - in.

Yes the growth in earnings has been low but a lot of my friends and family see the unemployment in the Eurozone and thank goodness they still have a job.

. No government wants a low wage economy because the tax take to the Treasury is cut, especially when the starting rate before tax kicks in is highered to help the lower paid.

Excellent post, Eloethan.
The Conservatives most definitely have not stopped PFI, even though they thought it was a bad idea when Blair was doing it.
The sad thing is with interest rates being so low it isn't even necessary now.

Durhamjen

I do understand the link you provided was only about the Welsh NHS in response to rosequartz but I believe the link you provided, to the Unison union is dated 2007, 6 years out of date.

I apologise if I am incorrect but as the years progress the figures just seem to get worse.

rosequartz You now say "I don't think I said that the financial difficulties were all of Labour's making."

It looked pretty much that way to me:

"What a legacy left to us by Labour" ........

"Lots of lovely hospitals, schools, prisons - all on credit ..... all of this seemed to be the ethos of Labour's 13 year administration", etc. etc. etc.

Well, during those 13 years a lot of mistakes were made and Blair fooled a lot of people. But there was nowhere near as much misery in the general population as there is now. There was a financial crisis - not only experienced in this country but across Europe and the US - and the Conservatives, as all politicians do, made political capital of it and managed to get enough votes to cobble together a coalition.

You may believe that the Conservatives were sad and worried about the impact of the financial crisis on this country. My feeling, however, is that they were delighted because this was their big opportunity to fulfil their stated wish to shrink the state and hand everything over to big business.

At first we were "all in it together". Like the "Big Society", that phrase isn't used any more because it's so patently obvious that we're not all in it together. Austerity was the path chosen because it fitted in with Conservative doctrine. It is a path that other European countries have also been forced to take, and it hasn't done them much good either. The Conservatives talk about creating more jobs than ever before, but it has been reported that 4 out of 5 jobs created since 2010 have been low paid. Low wages mean a lower tax take, less money available to spend, more unaffordable debt, more mental and physical ill health, more relationship breakdown, more pressure on the court system, more children in care, etc. etc. All these peripheral effects, apart from devastating ordinary lives, cost money and ultimately weaken the state as a whole.

I will look tomorrow

before I get neck problem and RSI.

I am surprised! Our friend has waited 2 years for the second one ( no underlying health problems), DH waited 18 months for the first then a year for the second one. Don't even think about hip or knee operations here - well, think about it 2 years in advance.

I went over the border with an urgent eye problem because the wait in Wales could have had serious consequences.

I will say that certain other areas of medicine/surgery are very good.

PFI in Wales, rose. There is some, but not a lot. The first annex shows what, where and when it happened.

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CFcQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.assembly.wales%2Fen%2Fbus-home%2Fbus-third-assembly%2F3-committees%2F3-other-committees%2F3-fin%2Fbus-committees-third-fin-inquiry%2Fbus-committees-third-fin-ppp%2Ffin3-ppp-writev%2FPages%2Fbus-committees-third-fin-ppp010.aspx&ei=vKd7VKDbO9PVau71gPAK&usg=AFQjCNFysVnvt0x9S1DYXP4zkIP89aPrvQ&bvm=bv.80642063,d.d2s&cad=rja

Sorry about the length of the link. That's what Google does.

As you ask durhamjen

It is hard to find examples of Conservative PFI deals because of the period of time that has elapsed since 1992 when they were first introduced in the UK. Most of the PFI deals they undertook have presumably ended or were not a major issue? Labour took the helm as we all know in 1997 and PFI deals 'snowballed'.

There is plenty of information to be read on PFI but unlike yourself I do not know how to put them on GN as a link. Perhaps another poster will.

If anybody takes the time to look at the information that's out there it is quite damning and it is clear to see why and how the NHS is in such a mess with the vast sums of debt they find themselves lumbered with, by the same politicians who say the NHS is only safe in their hands to this day.

I think PFI in it's own right might have had some substance to it but those Ministers who ' signed them off ' were inept, didn't understand the economics, and thought they would get away with it because we had, in their words, seen the last of ' Boom and Bust'. That is a fact not party politics.

It has to be remembered PFI deals are not the sole bastion of the NHS they are costing schools, education establishments, the underground etc. vast running costs and the UK debt figure is eye watering, hence we have/owe the largest debt in Europe.

The North East is most definitely not Conservative. That might be its problem. If it was Conservative, it might have a better NHS.
Still will not vote for them, though, because they do not want anyone to have an NHS in five years time.

The interesting thing, rose, is that the area of England that was thought comparable to Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland was the North East, which is where I live, so I can compare experiences in all family members.
My mother in law had cataract operations in both eyes a year before my husband, in the North East, and she had longer to wait than he did, but that was probably because he was diabetic and they could not tell if he had retinopathy. However, he still had to wait over six months for the first operation. My sister in law only waited three months in Wales, and there was no underlying condition, and then another three for the next.

Actually, reading the post about the report on comparable areas and the state of the NHS, I take it that the Labour-run Welsh NHS is no better than the Conservative-run NHS in a comparable area of England.
So Labour are no better than the Conservatives - in fact probably worse as they have no PFIs to pay down.

Our friend has waited so long for a cataract operation in Wales that he had almost given up in despair. Last week (after all the furore about the state of the Nhs in Wales ) he was phoned and offered a choice of three hospitals in England to go and have the operation done in the very near future.

Cancer patients are moving over the border to England to access drugs denied them in Wales. One in the news is living in a holiday caravan.

I will say that some areas of health care are probably comparable to England and I have no real grumbles myself as yet (if you discount the GP surgery not answering the phone so that we struggle to make an appointment anyway, then the appointment can be two months hence unless a dire emergency) but two family members and several friends have been forced to go privately because of the length of time they were waiting to see specialists.

I am pleased your relatives are not experiencing problems, DJ, and I keep fingers and toes crossed that DH and I will not in the future either.

absent, I asked durhamjen a specific question.

Surely it's reasonable to expect a reply.

I'm not talking about general posts which can be picked up or not, depending on the reader's inclination.

"In 2014 the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation produced a report comparing the performance of the NHS in the four countries of the UK since devolution in 1999. They included data for the North East of England as an area more similar to the devolved areas than the rest of England. They found that there was little evidence that any one country was moving ahead of the others consistently across the available indicators of performance. There had been improvements in all four countries in life expectancy and in rates of mortality amenable to health care. Despite the hotly contested policy differences between the four countries there was little evidence, where there was comparable data, of any significant differences in outcomes. The authors also complained about the increasingly limited set of comparable data on the four health systems of the UK."

Wales is no different according to the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation.
I have a brother and sister in law and an uncle and three cousins living in Wales. None of them have had the problems I have had trying to contact a GP, or having operations. My sister-in-law has had two cataract operations in less time than it took my husband to have one three years ago. The uncle has had three heart operations over the last ten years. Someone else I know is being treated for leukaemia in Wales so I do know a bit about the Welsh health system.

Sorry, Ana, for going to make myself a cup of tea before I replied.

Ana Surely gransnetters are just as entitled to ignore posts as they are to reply to them. Posts are frequently ignored by other posters on all sorts of threads, maybe because the point wasn't especially interesting, maybe because it has already been made several times, maybe because there were so many posits it got lost among them, maybe because it was unutterably stupid, maybe because people were busy replying to something someone else had posted, maybe because they got sidetracked. No one is obliged to respond to a particular post even have they have been posting frequently on a thread.

That's right, durhamjen - just ignore posts you don't wish to acknowledge or respond to, as usual...