...are fully aware that it never did and never will. Or we'll never break the seeming stranglehold this 'organisation' has on the politicians.
While only 15% thought the NHS was not coping well with treating coronavirus patients, many more – 41% – believed that it was not coping well with providing other services.
Because it's spending all its time on the first category! A child could see this!
But maybe it's just 'media perception'?
...it’s not just media reports that change people’s perceptions of the health service, and many people have personal experience of struggling to access their GP or being stuck on a hospital waiting list,” she added.
Ah. Indeed, it's something everyone seems to have a personal horror story about. So it's not something that can be kept quiet any longer.
Not that the usual suspects aren't going to refuse to draw the obvious conclusions, though!
Labour said the findings showed the effects of persistent and unaddressed staff shortages.
It doesn't really matter how many staff they have if they are all dealing with just one thing - or at home because a PCR test came back positive - does it?
“None of this is the fault of our heroic health and social care workers, who are getting Britain through this pandemic. For our NHS to be able to provide the care patients expect the workforce needs to be properly valued, strengthened and provided with modern equipment and technology to ensure patients receive quality care quicker,” he added.
'Properly valued'..?
Why would I value a tradesman - say, a mechanic - who handed me back my car after three days in for a service and said 'I spent all the time on that non-working door light, haven't checked the brakes or suspension or topped off the oil and stuff, that'll be £133 billion, please'..?
8 comments:
At a real risk of repeating myself: the NHS is a bad joke.It's a top heavy self-serving bureaucracy which has been allowed - or has chosen - or has been instructed - to forget why it exists. Yes, there are NHS workers who care and are grafting as they always have; there are others - like the majority of GPs - who are taking the money and taking the piss. I know of two people who are in extreme pain and being fobbed off by our local - Doncaster - shambles.
It's easy to say that the NHS suffers from mismanagement but to have that you need managers. The NHS has placeholders instead.
The people getting us through this mess are bin emptiers, electricity supply jugglers, water and sewage workers, all sorts of delivery people, shop and store workers, passenger transport workers, the guys who keep your car running, the plumber, electrician gas technician who comes, oh the horror, right into your house to ensure you do not freeze and have not water and can flush your loo, all those who keep shops and stores stocked and running efficiently. You know I could go on.
Why are they not doing choreographed videos? Why is nobody clapping?
Do the Zoom doctors not see the irony of calling on this lot's services?
I am thinking that the three-in-four are those that haven't tried to use the NHS recently
Echoing Doonhamer, the true heroes are as invisible as they are modest.
The NHS is a self-serving disgrace, from top to bottom. This episode should have exposed it for all to see, including ideally some politicians with the cojones to rebuild it, but that ain't going to happen as long as the sheeple are happy to clap and wait, and wait, and wait . . .
I can remember waiting lists being an issue in the early 1980s when some of my lefty workmates were outraged that people were going private to bypass the queues. Nearly forty years ago that was. Of course back then I wasn't clued up enough to suggest that maybe socialised healthcare was the problem and that there aren't any waiting lists at the vets.
The NHS is the perfect exemplar of both Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy(1) and Conquests Third Law of Politics(2).
As an illustration:
When I trained and first qualified (in the dim and distant past of the 90’s, when dinosaurs ruled the earth) at a major London teaching hospital with close to a thousand inpatient beds, I had two superiors – the Ward Sister and Matron (one of each). When I was finally ‘encouraged’ to leave the profession last year from a small regional ‘city’ hospital with closer to one … hundred inpatient beds, I had eight ‘levels’ of superiors – Junior Sisters x2, Senior Sisters x2, Ward manager, Clinical Manager, Department Manager, Speciality manager, Divisional manager and eight Matrons !?!
At the same time. When first employed (depending on clinical setting) I worked an average shift with five qualified colleagues (six of us total), at least four students, and four auxiliary nurses for an average 24 bedded ward (Sister wasn’t counted in the numbers). When I left I worked with two qualified and three health care assistants for … a 24 bedded ward (the four total qualified included whichever sister was on duty and students were a rare ‘supernumerary’ experience – which I’m told actually means ‘only work when they feel like it, and none of the icky jobs thanks').
Each and every manager has secretaries, and the secretaries have secretaries. Clerks and managers abound but you need to search to find a clinical nurse (many so listed only do non-clinical advisory or research roles). There's a constant staff shortage yet the only advertised posts are for managerial, secretarial or the highly paid 'do nothing very much' non-clinical positions.
I seem to recall an article in The Economist many years ago that calculated there was something like one doctor for 16 beds, one nurse for every four and … four managers per bed. The situation has become (intentionally) much, much worse since then.
But don't worry, if you're important you'll get subsidised 'private' care taking even more capacity and staff away from caring for the plebs. I'm not just talking about politicians, read the small-print and you'll realise that part of the munificent remuneration for all those management positions in the NHS is ... private health care!!! You really couldn't make it up.
(1)
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
(2)
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:
1: Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2: Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3: The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
With arseholes to rival plod dilations, I'm surprised the NHS did so well in this survey.
"...the NHS is a bad joke.It's a top heavy self-serving bureaucracy which has been allowed - or has chosen - or has been instructed - to forget why it exists."
I know how we can fix this, though. We just elect a Conservative government and...
...wait, where are you going?
"Why are they not doing choreographed videos? "
They are actually busy..?
"I am thinking that the three-in-four are those that haven't tried to use the NHS recently"
Indeed! And don't have friends or relatives who have, either.
"The NHS is a self-serving disgrace, from top to bottom. This episode should have exposed it for all to see..."
If this doesn't do it, what will?
"The NHS is the perfect exemplar of both Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy(1) and Conquests Third Law of Politics(2)."
Spot on! The only question should be: reform? Or scrap the whole thing and start again?
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