O/T:- The NHS strike - for or against?

[OP67]

The NHS has been underfunded, understaffed and lacking in serious investment for decades by various governments that have found it harder and harder to keep it going. Alyone waiting for the land of milk and honey promised by a Labour government in 2024 will be disappointed. There needs to a completely different way of thinking about the way it's funded in future and most people will not like it. 19% pay rise is a crazy amount and can olny be funded by cuts elsewhere.

My brother went private for a simple treatment the other year and it was a completely different world. I remember trying to get a graph of my mothers weight at the QMC years ago. Considering that the loss of weight was the reason she was in there they couldn't supply me with one. Instead turned up with a book that they'd written it down in when they remembered, absolute disgrace. It is in no longer fit for purpose!!!!!

[Magpies1959]

Correct magpie_mania I don't know any supermarket workers that are on £33,000 a year. This dispute started as a cry for more pay to stop them using food banks, and as support for the strike is not so popular now, they are chirping about it now being all about staffing levels and not being able to look after patients in the way they would like.
A 19% pay increase for a nurse would mean them receiving an extra £120 pounds a week, (let that sink in) which is funded by the tax payer, who then ends up at the food bank
sinophile, yes lets all pay more tax so the NHS staff can have lots of money to spend. Big question is how do the poor b*ggers making all these extra goods the nurses are buying, get a pay rise, as the vast majority would not be in a union and chances are their bosses would pocket all the extra money made from the sale of these items.
Elite_Pie many workers take home far less pay and work in far worse conditions than NHS staff but do not have a union to hold the country to ransom. Compared to the jobs I had in my working career, I would be as happy as a pig in sh*t working for the NHS.

[sinophile]

The tax I'm talking about is VAT and income tax. It means paying the same rates, it is more revenue for the government due to increased economic activity, not just increasing tax rates as some would believe. Regarding public sector pay and private sector pay, private sector pay increases are roughly 2 to 3 times that of the public sector. There must be some very strong unions in the private sector! I'm pleased you accept the basic point I've made, though.

[Chicken Balti Pie]

Correct magpie_mania I don't know any supermarket workers that are on £33,000 a year. This dispute started as a cry for more pay to stop them using food banks, and as support for the strike is not so popular now, they are chirping about it now being all about staffing levels and not being able to look after patients in the way they would like.
A 19% pay increase for a nurse would mean them receiving an extra £120 pounds a week, (let that sink in) which is funded by the tax payer, who then ends up at the food bank
sinophile, yes lets all pay more tax so the NHS staff can have lots of money to spend. Big question is how do the poor b*ggers making all these extra goods the nurses are buying, get a pay rise, as the vast majority would not be in a union and chances are their bosses would pocket all the extra money made from the sale of these items.
Elite_Pie many workers take home far less pay and work in far worse conditions than NHS staff but do not have a union to hold the country to ransom. Compared to the jobs I had in my working career, I would be as happy as a pig in sh*t working for the NHS.

They are salaried but then they basically worked out the "hourly rate" they then worked out the "net hourly rate" (after tax and pensions and whatnot) and then compared it to a deputy store manager at Aldi's gross hourly rate. It's disingenuous to say the least. Another trick they use is to say Health Care Assistants are "nurses", HCAs whilst do probably deserve more (they're near minimum wage), they aren't included in the nurses' pay awards. It's quite frankly wrong.

As for the working environment, I know for a fact that a lot of trusts don't want them working 12 hour shifts but the nurses themselves demanded it so in theory they only work 3 shifts a week on average. The problem is, this causes issues with staffing and keeping the levels correct and meeting the working time directive as well. If the government turned and said, right, you get a pay rise, but you're moving to 8 hour shifts, I wonder if they'd accept...

[sidders]

Where to start on the many misapprehensions occurring on this fred. Let's start by looking at the Tories' philosophy. They are committed to shrinking the state and putting more money in people's (i.e. their own) pockets. Can't people see that this strike has given them the opportunity to claim that unions broke the NHS (not them) and move us to a US type system where they and their cronies make vast amounts of lolly through medical insurance and the pharma industry?
What is this nonsense about their being a finite sum from which to meet pay demands? Echoes of Teresa May's magic money tree. Of course the country can't afford 19% for nurses but that figure is an opening gambit for 'negotiations' - which Tories refuse to take part in. It's all about priorities in spending rather than finite sums. We were told there was no money before the absolute shambles on PPE which Grantham rightly points out was nepotism run riot.
Davy 500 - are you under the belief that schools teach what teachers decide on? The National Curriculum is determined by various government bodies these days so if it's rubbish it's their rubbish. If teaching was such a cosy option, what a fool you were not to follow it as a career yourself - such easy pickings!
Yes, Elite, I support the strikers, The NHS needs total reform and the main correction would be linking medical and social care. This bunch of charlatans have been promising reform which would include that for 12 years but failed abysmally.
As I said about teachers, if people thought nursing was such a cushy number, why are nurses leaving it in droves?
Finally for now - Sunak. His wealth means he will never be abandoned in an ambulance for hours on end. His background and religion, which is supportive of a caste system, hardly qualifies him to care a fig about the poor and needy in our society.

[upthemaggies]

If you travel almost anywhere in the World you will find people admire the fact that healthcare is provided free of charge when people in the UK need it, regardless of ability to pay.

And yet we're the least healthy nation in the developed world. It's a system that infantilises people and discourages them from taking responsibility for their own health, alcohol in-take in particular which apparently creates the biggest strain of all on NHS resources.

It was a great idea when it was introduced at a time when large swathes of the population were still living in Victorian conditions (see those photographs of bare-foot unwashed malnourished kids on the inner city streets taken as late as the 1960s). It's not fit for purpose in the 21st century however.

[Elite_Pie]

This dispute started as a cry for more pay to stop them using food banks, and as support for the strike is not so popular now, they are chirping about it now being all about staffing levels and not being able to look after patients in the way they would like.

That is a complete and utter lie. It's just something you've made up.

[BigFatPie]

Obviously the nurses and everyone else have the right to strike and should do after putting up with years of piss poor pay rises that have made them relatively poorer for the last 12 years.

What grates a bit is the Tory voters on here who’ve voted time and again to destroy the NHS and are now complaining it’s not fit for purpose or some other bullsh!t. IT’S WHAT YOU VOTED FOR YOU SILLY KUNTS! The NHS was one of the most highly rated health services in 2010 and guess what’s happened since.

[sidders]

And yet we're the least healthy nation in the developed world. It's a system that infantilises people and discourages them from taking responsibility for their own health, alcohol in-take in particular which apparently creates the biggest strain of all on NHS resources.

It was a great idea when it was introduced at a time when large swathes of the population were still living in Victorian conditions (see those photographs of bare-foot unwashed malnourished kids on the inner city streets taken as late as the 1960s). It's not fit for purpose in the 21st century however.

You disappoint me with this post, utm. From what source do you draw your opening statement? My own life survives purely because a wonderful surgeon performed a tricky operation in the nick of time. He told me that he had given me an extra 6 years' life. Well, I'm still here 12 years on.
The nanny state does indeed infantilise some people but balance that against the number whose lives are transformed by access to care and information. In the US my condition would have reduced me to penury purely by chance. I have always eaten sensibly and exercised regularly so my aneurysm wasn't a result of my own carelessness.
Don't throw out the baby etc. The NHS needs reform but its founding principles hold good to this day. I'd rather it had the power to reform itself than be thrown to Tory politicians and their open pockets.

[TheBlackHorse]

... trying to cut away from some of the well meaning self interest on this emotive topic ... my daughter was in the last intake of nurses (thank God) before the idiot who decided nurses need a degree. She has a good friend, employed by NHS, who is an accountant earning £96,000 pa. For decades, along with much of GB general management, there is criminal poor management of most things in the NHS. It's useless politicians who have little knowledge about what makes things work - never mind whether red or blue - which allows out of control senior and middle managers to 'empire build'. The unions, bless them, see this total ineptitude and can play havoc with the useless system. Time to separate front line workers - nurses, ambulance staff, social workers - from the support staff ... although you can bet your life that unions won't go for that. My daughter is now a prescribing nurse ... you can imagine what she thinks about the situation ... NO MORE MONEY FOR THE NHS; CUT THE ADMIN/MANAGEMENT. It's not unlike the miners contempt for surface workers ... history repeating itself in a different form.