Election Year or Fear!

[Andy_Faber]

NHS or private? Had it been a genuine ‘painful’ emergency do you think you’d have been seen quicker?

A private practise would have seen GP PDQ but of course it’s in their commercial interest to do so

[ramAnag]

A private practise would have seen GP PDQ but of course it’s in their commercial interest to do so

Which is part of the problem imo. For whatever reason, and Swale has touched on them, we have a situation where commercial interest now takes priority over compassion/health interests even where medical/dental matters are concerned.

It’s been happening for a while. About a decade ago I was unfortunate enough to need root canal while on holiday in southern Spain. I was seen within the hour, treated at an excellent German/Spanish practice and charged around €350 for the two necessary visits. About a year earlier I’d needed the same procedure (on a different tooth!) which I had done in Mickleover…the charge was the wrong side of £450. ‘Rip off Britain’ or just a loss of the values of decency and compassion that health providers should be synonymous with and a sign of the times?

[Geoff Parkstone]

"where commercial interest now takes priority over compassion/health interests even where medical/dental matters are concerned."

Not sure I quite get that one rA. The compassion towards and health interests of the patient remain the same whether a private payment is made or if it's a "free" treatment (not that it's free as such).

Dentists need patients one way or the other, so health interests are dealt with. It's just a question as to who is treated, rather than any lack of compassion.

If course anyone who pays privately for healthcare is one less patient for the NHS to deal with: and it's not like you opt out of NI payments when paying privately.

There is a symbiotic relationship between NHS and private healthcare - neither could survive without the other. I chose to pay for private healthcare insurance (exc dentistry) and have to date got little from it. That's my choice. Someone else might chose to spend their disposable income on beer, gambling, holidays etc etc. That's their choice. DobI think beer or holidays should be funded by the state? No...

[Trickytreesreds]

Which is part of the problem imo. For whatever reason, and Swale has touched on them, we have a situation where commercial interest now takes priority over compassion/health interests even where medical/dental matters are concerned.

It’s been happening for a while. About a decade ago I was unfortunate enough to need root canal while on holiday in southern Spain. I was seen within the hour, treated at an excellent German/Spanish practice and charged around €350 for the two necessary visits. About a year earlier I’d needed the same procedure (on a different tooth!) which I had done in Mickleover…the charge was the wrong side of £450. ‘Rip off Britain’ or just a loss of the values of decency and compassion that health providers should be synonymous with and a sign of the times?

Really?
So ask yourself this. If Germany has sucj a wonderful health service and ours is falling to bits. WHY?

How much of Germany's GDP is spent on healthcare?
Germany: health expenditure as a share of GDP 1980-2022 ...
In 2022, Germany spent 12.7 percent of its GDP on healthcare. The total expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP has increased since 1980.


Health funding data analysis

British Medical Association
https://www.bma.org.uk › nhs-delivery-and-workforce
10 Aug 2023 — OECD data shows that the UK spent around 12% of its GDP on health in 2020 and 2021, compared to only 10% in 2019.

Germans even pay less in prescription charges. So that balances out the slight GDP difference.

So why do we have monstrous waiting times?

I'll let you all list the reasons.
I'll start with piss poor staff structure of too many chiefs and not enough indians, with many stupid jobs/roles taking up resources.

[Trickytreesreds]

Excellent, the NHS is another sympton of a bigger disease.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/21/mass-migration-has-been-a-disaster-for-britain/

IN CASE YOU CANNOT SEE IT.

Whenever it’s suggested that Britain could manage without importing 1.2 million people every year, out come the usual voices with the usual lines.

The NHS would collapse overnight, care homes would go unstaffed, our best universities would implode into a financial black hole, the ravens would leave the Tower of London and the last trumpet would sound as Britain sank slowly, gracelessly into the frigid waters of the North Sea.

This is scaremongering. Britain would be fine with massively reduced immigration; the only thing standing in the way is the Government.

Let’s start with the NHS. 2022, it hired some 12,148 foreign doctors. Over the 2022-23 financial year, they were joined by an additional 24,000 nurses. You could cut the numbers arriving by over a million before touching this tiny group. The health service is not a barrier to reform.

Even if it was, we could work around it. Every year, hundreds of qualified students are turned away from medical school due to the Government capping places. This has left Britain significantly more reliant on overseas staff than its peers, and hasn’t necessarily increased quality, either.

Doctors trained overseas are significantly more likely to face serious complaints than their domestic counterparts, and it is notable that the countries providing the most – Nigeria, Pakistan, and India – have two universities in the top 500 worldwide between them, compared to 54 in Britain. We might find it worth looking at what’s obstructing supply at home.

The university sector, on the other hand, does rely on funding from overseas students. It’s not hard to work out why; frozen domestic tuition fees have seen their real value fall £3,000 per student. Fees for foreign students, meanwhile, are uncapped.

The result has been an explosion in student visas, driven by huge numbers from poor countries attending the least selective, cheapest universities. These institutions are not selling education; they’re selling the right to work on the post-study visa.

Nobody is suggesting that the likes of Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial should be forced to turn away talented students. But at the lower end of the scale, we should either raise fee caps, or let failed institutions fail. Allowing what amounts to a backdoor work visa fee is absurd.

The social care sector, too, could probably function without massive immigration. It’s true that large numbers are recruited from overseas - 101,000 last year. But this isn’t because British workers aren’t capable of doing the job. It’s because it doesn’t pay enough. The median care home worker earned just £10.11 an hour in March. Aldi and Lidl pay £11.40, and Amazon warehouses around £13. It’s no wonder people are leaving.

The primary issue, again, is the government. Local authorities are responsible for publicly funded care; their real terms budgets have fallen 29 per cent between 2010 and 2022. The Treasury could dig into its pockets, and let wages rise. It wouldn’t cost that much; the full time equivalent social care workforce is about 1.2 million people, so giving every single worker a £2/hour pay rise would cost about £5 billion. The net cost would be even less if we could shift some of the 5 million on out of work benefits into employment.

Rather than do this, the Government is bringing in people willing to work for less. This looks great in the short run; the Chancellor can stand at the despatch box and promise tax cuts, with the OBR dutifully plugging in fancifully low spending assumptions for the larger population.

The problem is that it’s a ponzi scheme. People on care visas are eventually eligible for permanent residency, and free to work elsewhere, requiring more migrants to replace them. Meanwhile, studies have shown time and time again that these low skilled, non-EU workers almost inevitably turn out to be a long run fiscal drain.

But by the time those costs show up, the politicians have moved on and the mess is someone else’s to fix. It’s a pattern repeated from sector to sector. Britain deserves better than this reliance on immigration to cover the government’s incompetence.

[Andy_Faber]

Which is part of the problem imo. For whatever reason, and Swale has touched on them, we have a situation where commercial interest now takes priority over compassion/health interests even where medical/dental matters are concerned.

It’s been happening for a while. About a decade ago I was unfortunate enough to need root canal while on holiday in southern Spain. I was seen within the hour, treated at an excellent German/Spanish practice and charged around €350 for the two necessary visits. About a year earlier I’d needed the same procedure (on a different tooth!) which I had done in Mickleover…the charge was the wrong side of £450. ‘Rip off Britain’ or just a loss of the values of decency and compassion that health providers should be synonymous with and a sign of the times?

I tend to agree with you rather than GP, based only on personal experience

[Geoff Parkstone]

Trust me, Andy, I'm a GP

[ramAnag]

"where commercial interest now takes priority over compassion/health interests even where medical/dental matters are concerned."

Not sure I quite get that one rA. The compassion towards and health interests of the patient remain the same whether a private payment is made or if it's a "free" treatment (not that it's free as such).

Dentists need patients one way or the other, so health interests are dealt with. It's just a question as to who is treated, rather than any lack of compassion.

If course anyone who pays privately for healthcare is one less patient for the NHS to deal with: and it's not like you opt out of NI payments when paying privately.

There is a symbiotic relationship between NHS and private healthcare - neither could survive without the other. I chose to pay for private healthcare insurance (exc dentistry) and have to date got little from it. That's my choice. Someone else might chose to spend their disposable income on beer, gambling, holidays etc etc. That's their choice. DobI think beer or holidays should be funded by the state? No...

I’m not really disagreeing with you, GP…and I take your point entirely about choice.
You, like me, have made appropriate arrangements to receive dental treatment via the NHS…once upon a time that was an easy thing to do and if we had toothache we could visit a dentist and usually receive very speedy pain relieving treatment.
That no longer seems to be the case. There now seems to be a severe shortage of NHS dental provision, quite probably - I don’t know enough to say with certainty - because of the shortage of funding which Swale referred to yesterday.
Tricky will probably blame immigration, especially Muslim immigrants, but there are very few, if any, Muslim immigrants where I live and yet the problem is still apparent and it’s no coincidence that the waiting room at my dentist now places far more emphasis on advertising a vast array of available and astonishingly expensive beauty treatments than it does on dental advice and remedies.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Thankfully my dentist has none of the cosmetic applications advertised. In fact when I spoke of implants to replace a knackered tooth I was directed to Hungary! Cheaper yet, Turkey, but having seen some of the results of that I'll stick to gumming things apart! "My" dental nurse is a fine example of the virtues of eastern European importation of labour - excellent, reassuring and professional.

No Muslims there although I guess they would be ideally suited for the role as already wearing full face masks!!

[ramAnag]

Thankfully my dentist has none of the cosmetic applications advertised. In fact when I spoke of implants to replace a knackered tooth I was directed to Hungary! Cheaper yet, Turkey, but having seen some of the results of that I'll stick to gumming things apart! "My" dental nurse is a fine example of the virtues of eastern European importation of labour - excellent, reassuring and professional.

No Muslims there although I guess they would be ideally suited for the role as already wearing full face masks!!

My dentist too is from Eastern Europe…Transylvania to be exact which she once explained to me with the memorable addition of ‘now you’re frightened aren’t you?’ Damned good dentist imo, in exactly the way you suggest.

[Trickytreesreds]

I’m not really disagreeing with you, GP…and I take your point entirely about choice.
You, like me, have made appropriate arrangements to receive dental treatment via the NHS…once upon a time that was an easy thing to do and if we had toothache we could visit a dentist and usually receive very speedy pain relieving treatment.
That no longer seems to be the case. There now seems to be a severe shortage of NHS dental provision, quite probably - I don’t know enough to say with certainty - because of the shortage of funding which Swale referred to yesterday.
Tricky will probably blame immigration, especially Muslim immigrants, but there are very few, if any, Muslim immigrants where I live and yet the problem is still apparent and it’s no coincidence that the waiting room at my dentist now places far more emphasis on advertising a vast array of available and astonishingly expensive beauty treatments than it does on dental advice and remedies.

FFS, you are getting as bad as Swale. Turn the issue into a deflection tactic. Poor, very poor.
Forget my opinion then and push your Tory bias to one side. Try looking whats right under your nostrils, from the Medics themselves. GP'S-

Dr Gary Howsam, vice chair of the RCGP, said: "The real issue is that we have a huge shortage of GPs, and our workforce is no longer big enough to manage the needs of an ageing and growing patient population with increasingly complex needs. This was the case before the pandemic and it has only been further exacerbated by the events of the past two years."

A spokesperson for DHSC said there are "now nearly 1,500 more doctors in general practice than before the pandemic". But there's the equivalent of 1,622 fewer full-time GPs treating greater numbers of patients compared with 2015, with the average GP working nearly 20% fewer hours, for a total of 38.4 per week, than in 2000.

The NHS lost 743 GPs in the year from March 2021 to April 2022, according to the British Medical Association (BMA), and nearly half of current GPs plan to retire by 60, mostly due to burnout, a survey by GP magazine, Pulse, revealed. Meanwhile, the population continues to grow, age and become sicker, leaving GPs with 16% more patients, roughly 300, than they did in seven years ago.


NOW COUPLE IN THE FACT OF WHAT i TOLD YOU EARLIER-
They would rather not bother training our own people, but bring in outside help?
Thats a false economy and a ponsi scheme.

Sounds very familiar right across the board in the UK

[ramAnag]

[QUOTE=Trickytreesreds;40467379] Turn the issue into a deflection tactic. [\QUOTE]

Lol…did you, of all people, really say that?

[Trickytreesreds]

Not this election, but the next one could be game changing.

The Conservative Party is toast. There is no path to a Tory victory. Rishi Sunak cuts an increasingly tragic and isolated figure. I write this with great sadness, but the Prime Minister has never looked so powerless, so unable to command the country’s attention. His podium speech on extremism was ignored by Scotland Yard.

His Budget has made zero impact. There is little prospect of No 10 seizing the narrative. Tory MPs are either in open panic or are trying to coast through their last few months in office, though not in power. The Government has alienated every segment of the Conservative base without gaining any new voters. Its only hope is a schism on the Left that limits Labour’s gains.

One experienced political figure has put money on a sub-100 Tory seat outcome. The best case scenario – a 1997-style shellacking with 165 Conservative seats, and a 179-seat Labour majority – looks optimistic. The mid-range scenario – a 1906-Liberal landslide-style thumping, with the Tories losing more than half their seats – feels equally bullish.

The worst case scenario – a Canada 1993 replay, where the ruling Canadian Tories lost all but two of their seats – may be too pessimistic and would involve the Lib Dems becoming the Opposition, but it would be foolish to rule it out. The best polls for the Tories put them on 24-27 per cent; the worst on 18-20 per cent, less than John Major’s 30.7 per cent.

The Red Wall is furious about Brexit betrayal, immigration, defence, the cost of net zero, wokery and a lack of levelling-up; the Blue Wall is appalled by high tax, red tape, low-traffic neighbourhoods, rampant crime, the sub-postmasters scandal and the lack of a pro-growth strategy; the young are apoplectic about house prices; and the country is united in disgust at our broken infrastructure, pothole-strewn roads, calamitous NHS and gradual impoverishment.

The Tory heartlands loathe the Islamist-inspired extremist chants evident on the demos that hijack central London weekly, and members hate David Cameron’s cowardly decision to turn against Israel.

The Tories have failed in three critical ways. First, they squandered the anti-establishment protest vote behind Brexit, Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory and which is fuelling every single Right-wing or populist party across the West. The great realignment – whereby culturally conservative, patriotic voters shifted Right-wards, and the ultra-urban woke Left-wards – has been wasted.

The future of the centre-Right globally is to harness the rage of the working and middle classes, to act as competent revolutionaries, to make people’s lives better via reforms, to root out wokery, regain control of the borders and boost growth. Instead, the Tories have acted as incompetent, purveyors of the status quo. Angry voters are thus voting for Right-wing parties everywhere bar Britain.

Second, they lost the under-40s: again – this is a British aberration. Donald Trump is leading 51-45 among under-30s, a Fox News poll reveals. Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian Conservative, leads 36-21 among under-30s, and 41-21 among the 30-44s, an Abacus poll shows, partly because of a strong offering on house building and a backlash against Justin Trudeau’s authoritarianism. Populist and Right-wing parties in Europe are also doing well among the young.

Third, the Tories are catastrophically behind among ethnic minorities. Their erstwhile progress with British Hindus, British Chinese and Christian British Africans has been squandered through ineptitude and the party’s insufficiently robust conservatism. Disgusting racist reported comments by a donor aren’t helping.

By contrast, the US elections may herald a historic shift of ethnic minorities towards the Republicans, as anti-woke, pro-aspiration, pro-family voters are repelled by Joe Biden’s critical race theory and high taxes. A New York Times poll suggests Democrats have lost most Hispanics, and are only ahead 56-44 among all non-white voters.

With the Tories lacking agency, it will be incumbent upon Nigel Farage to once again determine their future. Does he give up his media career – he is a brilliant broadcaster for GB News – and cash in his I’m a Celebrity-enhanced reputation to re-enter the nasty, ungrateful world of politics? If he jumps in nearer to the vote, and launches a lightning air war, making a series of striking promises, by how much would his Reform UK jump in the polls? Or does he stand aside, allowing the Tories to be crushed but not obliterated, with the risk that they are subsequently captured by their anti-Brexit Left-wing?

Farage’s calculation will take account of four factors. He would want not merely to bruise the Tories but inflict upon them their greatest ever humiliation. His revenge would need to be total: he would want to overtake them in vote share. This isn’t as fanciful as it seems: YouGov puts the Tories at 20 per cent and Reform on 14. The caveat is that most other pollsters suggest a wider gap, and Reform may be underperforming slightly in actual votes.

The second requirement would be for him to win a seat for himself and hopefully others: hard, but doable.

The third would be to reunite the Right of British politics, either by absorbing any Right-wing Tory survivors into Reform post-election, or by merging into (and possibly leading) a rump Tory party purged of its Lefties.

The fourth, most tentative goal would be to bolster the case for PR or an AV transferable vote system.

A Farage re-entry would guarantee a Tory implosion, multiple defections to Reform, and an apocalyptic loss of scores more Tory seats. But whether or not Farage presses the button, there is a gaping market gap on the Right, as well as more broadly for a party aligned with the electorate’s wishes. If Reform isn’t the answer, another group will be.

Labour’s triumph will be short-lived. It, too, is an unstable coalition between centre-Left and far-Left. It, too, will fail to mend Britain. Political entrepreneurs will soon begin to circle: by 2025-26, it is easy to conceive of a Macron-style Left-Right start-up party boasting 20 policies, all with 75 per cent support in the polls, and fielding a list of candidates (such as nurses and small business leaders) with no prior political experience.

Such a grouping – which would promise to spend yet more on the NHS, quit the ECHR, build prisons, slash immigration to near zero – would upend politics. One way or the other, the old order is finished, as Rishi Sunak is about to discover.

[Trickytreesreds]

[QUOTE=ramAnag;40467397]

Turn the issue into a deflection tactic. [\QUOTE]

Lol…did you, of all people, really say that?

Yes I did, because you do that all the time.. Then when you are losing the point and the 2 Derby stalwarts on here, pull you up for it. You go quiet, let it die down and repick it up days later, completely forgetting why you got a slap.
Its funny, but actually quite sad.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Not this election, but the next one could be game changing.

The Conservative Party is toast. There is no path to a Tory victory. Rishi Sunak cuts an increasingly tragic and isolated figure. I write this with great sadness, but the Prime Minister has never looked so powerless, so unable to command the country’s attention. His podium speech on extremism was ignored by Scotland Yard.

His Budget has made zero impact. There is little prospect of No 10 seizing the narrative. Tory MPs are either in open panic or are trying to coast through their last few months in office, though not in power. The Government has alienated every segment of the Conservative base without gaining any new voters. Its only hope is a schism on the Left that limits Labour’s gains.

One experienced political figure has put money on a sub-100 Tory seat outcome. The best case scenario – a 1997-style shellacking with 165 Conservative seats, and a 179-seat Labour majority – looks optimistic. The mid-range scenario – a 1906-Liberal landslide-style thumping, with the Tories losing more than half their seats – feels equally bullish.

The worst case scenario – a Canada 1993 replay, where the ruling Canadian Tories lost all but two of their seats – may be too pessimistic and would involve the Lib Dems becoming the Opposition, but it would be foolish to rule it out. The best polls for the Tories put them on 24-27 per cent; the worst on 18-20 per cent, less than John Major’s 30.7 per cent.

The Red Wall is furious about Brexit betrayal, immigration, defence, the cost of net zero, wokery and a lack of levelling-up; the Blue Wall is appalled by high tax, red tape, low-traffic neighbourhoods, rampant crime, the sub-postmasters scandal and the lack of a pro-growth strategy; the young are apoplectic about house prices; and the country is united in disgust at our broken infrastructure, pothole-strewn roads, calamitous NHS and gradual impoverishment.

The Tory heartlands loathe the Islamist-inspired extremist chants evident on the demos that hijack central London weekly, and members hate David Cameron’s cowardly decision to turn against Israel.

The Tories have failed in three critical ways. First, they squandered the anti-establishment protest vote behind Brexit, Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory and which is fuelling every single Right-wing or populist party across the West. The great realignment – whereby culturally conservative, patriotic voters shifted Right-wards, and the ultra-urban woke Left-wards – has been wasted.

The future of the centre-Right globally is to harness the rage of the working and middle classes, to act as competent revolutionaries, to make people’s lives better via reforms, to root out wokery, regain control of the borders and boost growth. Instead, the Tories have acted as incompetent, purveyors of the status quo. Angry voters are thus voting for Right-wing parties everywhere bar Britain.

Second, they lost the under-40s: again – this is a British aberration. Donald Trump is leading 51-45 among under-30s, a Fox News poll reveals. Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian Conservative, leads 36-21 among under-30s, and 41-21 among the 30-44s, an Abacus poll shows, partly because of a strong offering on house building and a backlash against Justin Trudeau’s authoritarianism. Populist and Right-wing parties in Europe are also doing well among the young.

Third, the Tories are catastrophically behind among ethnic minorities. Their erstwhile progress with British Hindus, British Chinese and Christian British Africans has been squandered through ineptitude and the party’s insufficiently robust conservatism. Disgusting racist reported comments by a donor aren’t helping.

By contrast, the US elections may herald a historic shift of ethnic minorities towards the Republicans, as anti-woke, pro-aspiration, pro-family voters are repelled by Joe Biden’s critical race theory and high taxes. A New York Times poll suggests Democrats have lost most Hispanics, and are only ahead 56-44 among all non-white voters.

With the Tories lacking agency, it will be incumbent upon Nigel Farage to once again determine their future. Does he give up his media career – he is a brilliant broadcaster for GB News – and cash in his I’m a Celebrity-enhanced reputation to re-enter the nasty, ungrateful world of politics? If he jumps in nearer to the vote, and launches a lightning air war, making a series of striking promises, by how much would his Reform UK jump in the polls? Or does he stand aside, allowing the Tories to be crushed but not obliterated, with the risk that they are subsequently captured by their anti-Brexit Left-wing?

Farage’s calculation will take account of four factors. He would want not merely to bruise the Tories but inflict upon them their greatest ever humiliation. His revenge would need to be total: he would want to overtake them in vote share. This isn’t as fanciful as it seems: YouGov puts the Tories at 20 per cent and Reform on 14. The caveat is that most other pollsters suggest a wider gap, and Reform may be underperforming slightly in actual votes.

The second requirement would be for him to win a seat for himself and hopefully others: hard, but doable.

The third would be to reunite the Right of British politics, either by absorbing any Right-wing Tory survivors into Reform post-election, or by merging into (and possibly leading) a rump Tory party purged of its Lefties.

The fourth, most tentative goal would be to bolster the case for PR or an AV transferable vote system.

A Farage re-entry would guarantee a Tory implosion, multiple defections to Reform, and an apocalyptic loss of scores more Tory seats. But whether or not Farage presses the button, there is a gaping market gap on the Right, as well as more broadly for a party aligned with the electorate’s wishes. If Reform isn’t the answer, another group will be.

Labour’s triumph will be short-lived. It, too, is an unstable coalition between centre-Left and far-Left. It, too, will fail to mend Britain. Political entrepreneurs will soon begin to circle: by 2025-26, it is easy to conceive of a Macron-style Left-Right start-up party boasting 20 policies, all with 75 per cent support in the polls, and fielding a list of candidates (such as nurses and small business leaders) with no prior political experience.

Such a grouping – which would promise to spend yet more on the NHS, quit the ECHR, build prisons, slash immigration to near zero – would upend politics. One way or the other, the old order is finished, as Rishi Sunak is about to discover.

Just to attribute authorship, this is Allister Heath writing in the Telegraph, not TTR thoughts.