Archive for the ‘nhs’ Category
Posted by michael on September 28, 2009
Gordon Brown has proved on almost every measure that he has failed to govern the UK.
How can New Labour fight an election based on what Cameron ‘might do‘ when Brown has proved without dispute that he unable to govern the UK and has put us into recession and given us years of high taxes and reduced services to pay back the debts!
How badly does a labour leader have to perform before the Labour hierarchy decide that he (or she) cannot do the job? If Brown was a managing director of a company he would have gone a long time ago!
It astounds me that there is even a discussion about Gordon Brown being capable of running the country for the next five years. It is not as though he was simply unlucky with events completely outside of his control taking place around him.
Brown inherited a fantastic economy from the Conservatives. The ‘Golden Inheritance’ allowed Blair and Brown a wonderful opportunity and they totally failed to take advantage of it!
One of Brown’s early actions was to tax pension funds, so now most ordinary people will not be able to retire as expected, they will have to work for longer because their pension has been devalued.
Labour would point to new schools and new hospitals, but most of these would seem to have been built on borrowings – the PFI debt is huge and we still need to pay it back. I can only assume that the PFI debt levels are kept hidden from the public to protect the Labour government!
The British rail expansion/ rebuild is also on borrowed money. These two debts, and some others, are not even included in the UK debt level figures!
So how much debt is the UK in? Redefining the UK debt levels to exclude some large debts would seem to indicate that we are allowed to know!
There is one thing that is quite amusing with New Labour’s attempts to stay in power. They are continually claiming that Cameron would do worse running the UK than New Labour would. I don’t believe that anyone could do worse that Blair and Brown have done over the last 12 years!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, UK Economy, credit crunch, debt, economy, election, financial, labour, national health service, nhs | Tagged: conservative, david cameron, gordon brown, government, labour, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on September 26, 2009
Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has said ‘Labour must expose the Tories‘ and ‘they had been given an easy ride by everybody‘.
Of course they have had an easy ride! Labour have been so appalling in government over the last 12 years that anyone, even the Lib Dems, look very, very good compared to Gordon Brown and New Labour!
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have taken us to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. There does not seem to have been any grounds for these wars. Now, of course, we are under continual threat by the people whom we attacked first!
If we hadn’t been part of the invasion of Iraq and then participated in a war against the Afghan people then we would not have spent a fortune in war materials and dealing with our injured soldiers! Nor would we need all this enhanced security and be continually defending ourselves from attacks by terrorists!
Oh I nearly forgot! Gordon Brown was chancellor and then prime minister and completely failed to regulate the financial industry and the banking industry. He appears to have completely missed the fact that our country was at risk from financial meltdown over the years before the meltdown actually happened!
I really don’t understand how anyone could expect the person who put the UK finances in such dire straits to be capable of getting us out of trouble. And it is looking as though other countries are coming out of recession whilst we look forward to many years of high taxes, cuts in services and huge debts!
My message to the Labour party conference is ‘be loyal to your leader and stick with him despite what he has put us through’. That we we can get rid of all of you at the next election!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, UK Economy, national health service, nhs, recession, war | Tagged: abuse, afghanistan, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, gordon brown, government, iraq war, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 16, 2009
The Royal College of GPs has criticized the way that the swine flu epedmic has been handled. They are concerned that the GP surgeries have been flooded with calls from people who are worried about swineflu.
The calls from the public have increased by nearly 50% in the last week to 40,000 a week.
We were one of those that phoned with five out of six in the family down with swineflu like symptons. The NHS helps lines were just recorded messages – a complete waste of time for us – they were just statements of the obvious!
If people need to phone doctors surgeries with questions about swineflu, as many have done, then the calls are being handled by the receptionists. There is no reason why the NHS could not handle these calls instead of overloading GP surgeries.
Obviously the NHS staff can advise that people should contact their doctor where that is the right advice! This is all that the GP receptionists do.
The UK government says that it has deals in place with Baxter and GlaxoSmithKline for up to 90m doses of a swine flu vaccine by December. And Brown has announced a vaccination program starting in September (or did he say, from December – which could then mean anytime in the future).
Yet reading the press it would appear that it will take several months to test the vaccine before it can be used on people. And there does seem to be a number of different countries all apparantly with contracts to get the vaccine. Yet Brown is claiming that half the UK can be vaccinated in September (the start of the flu vaccine season) .
I would guess that those people who normally get a flu jab before the onset of winter will end up being vaccinated without the H1N1 vaccine, and have to go back later for the H1N1 strain. How much later I don’t know!
The government is doing what it should be doing in this crisis. How well it does it we shall see. But we have now various people saying how wonderful it is that the government is actually doing it’s job!
The public are not really interested in the government doing it’s job. No plaudits there, it’s what they are paid for! The public will judge the government on how well it does the job.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, labour, national health service, nhs | Tagged: brown, conservative, david cameron, gordon brown, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 15, 2009
Lord Mandelson, who seems to be in charge of everything despite not being an elected MP, has said that Britain is facing a decade of public spending “constraints” in order to “rebalance” the country’s finances.
A ‘constraint‘ in public spending is not technically a ‘cut‘ in public spending but it definately means that less money will be spent on public spending!!!
So we now know that less money will be available for public services, which is anyone’s book is a CUT.
If the politicans want to ringfence, say, the NHS and defence, then there will be even LESS money available for the remaining public services. Yet Brown continually says that the NHS will not be affected.
Lord Mandelson said there would be “less spending in some programmes”, but “sustained investment” in areas like healthcare and defence would continue.
He also said the recession was “coming to an end,” but the effects of its “severity” were “not yet behind us”.
Why do you think that New Labour has delayed its planned review of future public spending from April 2010 until after the next general election! (I have learned to be cynical about what this government says!)
The Tories say ministers are hiding the true scale of cuts that are needed.
David Cameron has accused the government of refusing to commit to a spending review before the next general election “because they do not want to own up to the cuts they are planning”.
Look at the language the government ministers are using!
“spending choices” would have to be made’ – which means that some services will get reduced money no money!
a decade of public spending “constraints” in order to “rebalance” the country’s finances
Of course we will rebalance public finances in the medium term
the recession was “coming to an end,” but the effects of its “severity” were “not yet behind us”
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, credit crunch, debt, economy, energy, energy bills, financial, labour, national health service, nhs, recession, tax | Tagged: banker, bankers, banking, brown, conservative, credit, credit crunch, david cameron, gordon brown, government, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 11, 2009
The government is about to announce plans to scrap Daily Living Allowance (DLA) and attendance allowance (AA) according to a report in the Guardian.
The newspaper claims that a green paper was due out in June which proposes to convert DLA and AA into means tested ‘social care grants’ which would be spent by social services. However, the incoming DWP minister Yvette Cooper wanted some breathing space before launching the controversial new proposal.
Under the plans, DLA and AA would be scrapped, with the money saved being handed over to local authorities to administer as discretionary grants to provide care for the sick and disabled.
The grants would be means-tested and the local authority would decide what they could be spent on. This would be likely to be for services such as a personal assistant to help with getting out of bed, washing and dressing.
The government has claimed that any changes to DLA and AA will not affect current claimants.
But how could it be otherwise? At the moment many people on DLA and AA are cared for by their relatives. Some of the carers are able to claim Carers Allowance for more that 30 hours caring during a week. But most carers are relatives who do not get paid for caring.
Under the new system it would seem that paid council employees (or employees of sub-contracted companies) will now care for all people who need care.
This alone would surely cost more than the country can afford (which in reality is not much because the UK is as good as bankrupt under Labour!).
With thinking like this, it is a short step to stop anyone getting all kinds of benefits. After all who needs to give claimants money? The state could deliver the food that they want those on benefits to eat. The state could buy the clothes that those on benefits are to wear!
Or is the whole issue that the UK cannot afford to support disabled and sick people any more?
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, benefits, debt, economy, energy, energy bills, health, labour, nhs | Tagged: benefit, benefits, brown, conservative, david cameron, disability, disabled, economy, gordon brown, government, labour, sick, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on July 2, 2009
The government has acknowledged that trying to contain the virus is no longer an option.
In other words their attempts to contain the virus has failed. The measure of the failure is that there are currently around 3000 cases of swine flu in the UK but they expect that there may soon be up to 100,000 new cases a day.
Quote from our Prime Minister Gordon Brown:
The UK is one of the best prepared countries to deal with swine flu and “all action necessary” will be taken to stop its spread (april 2009).
The health secretary said UK preparations had been going on for the last five years to cope with a flu pandemic. He added:
the government proposed to use its stockpile of anti-viral drugs to treat patients showing symptoms of the disease, should the virus start spreading in the UK.
I don’t have any confidence at all in any of the utterances of our government of any of their plans or policies. Nothing they do seems to work, certainly not without having to be reworked!
So the fact that New Labour have failed to contain the swineflu outbreak is not a surprise to me. The fact that we have stockpiled anti-viral drugs which do not appear to have worked against the swineflu virus, is also not a surprise to me!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, health, labour, nhs | Tagged: brown, conservative, david cameron, epidemic, flu, gordon brown, government, health, nhs, pandemic, swine flu, swineflu, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 28, 2009
The NHS is likely to become a major battle ground in the forthcoming election. For a start it is possibly the area that affects more people in the UK than any other.
The PM has said that the NHS will not suffer from monetary cuts. This could only be true if the extra money is taken from other spending requirements or the UK debt levels are increased.
Of course this extra spending will be from the NHS budgets. It would be at the expense of other departments and treatments for other people.
We haven’t seen the details for this pledge that:
Patients in England suspected of suffering from cancer will have the right to see a specialist within two weeks
What does it actually mean? How long does a person suspected of suffering from cancer have to wait at the moment? Perhaps most people in that situation see a specialist within a week at the moment!
What is meant by a ‘cancer specialist’? It should certainly mean that the person is a qualified oncologist. It probably won’t be a consultant but one of his team instead. If I was a consultant running a department then I would make sure that this initial appointment was with very junior members of the team!!!
This two week deadline may keep consultant oncologists busy with private work. But every penny spent on private fees is money being taken out of the NHS system!
Seeing a specialist and then actually receiving any treatment are two completely different things!
And what happens if a person sees a private specialist because there was no one available on the NHS? Do they then get referred back to the NHS once the New Labour pledge of a private appointment has been met? Or do they stay in the private health system for all of their treatment?
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, economy, labour, national health service, nhs, recession | Tagged: brown, cancer, conservative, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, health service, nhs, oncologist, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
