Boris Johnson Apologises After Four-Year-Old Boy Had To Sleep On Hospital Floor

a reply to: Dwoodward85

I agree. As I said in my first post on this topic, to folk who don't see why Boris Johnson is supremely unsuitable to head the country, this won't make any difference.

He has already given us ample demonstrations of his ignorance and lack of common decency throughout his career as a journalist and politician. His girlfriend hit the nail on the head when she said of him, "You just don’t care for anything because you’re spoilt".

originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: ScepticScot

So you agree we should be spending more money on healthcare?

Not necessarily ...... I think we could start with culling the wastage that goes

on first.

There are highly paid managers in health trusts who never take responsibility

for anything except saying we need more money .......we could start by getting

rid of them, and bringing back Matrons?

There are poor managers in every walk of life.

The NHS as a whole spends way less on management than the rest of the economy.

You can't run an organisation like The NHS without spending on management and admin.

originally posted by: EvilAxis

Certainly there is urgent need for reform and restructuring of our health care system, and billions could be saved by reducing the backdoor privatisation introduced by the Conservatives, such as tendering of services in the private sector.

The great PFI heist: The real story of how Britain's economy has been left high and dry by a doomed economic philosophy
Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), recently made an astonishing admission on BBC1’s Question Time when he stated that private finance initiatives (PFI) had been a “fraud on the people” the real story of PFI reveals that RBS alongside other global banks, notably HSBC, were instrumental in what Sir Howard has effectively labelled a great heist.
Of course, PFI was not always a toxic brand. In 1997 it appeared to be New Labour’s magical solution to chronic underinvestment in public services in the wake of Thatcherism.

Take note the ^^^^LABOUR GOVERNMENT^^^^

As Alan Milburn – the former Labour Health Secretary described as an “almost maniacal convert to PFI” – put it: “It’s PFI or bust.”
The argument went that Labour had inherited public services in such a diabolical state of neglect that there was no alternative to the private financing of whole swathes of infrastructure.
It was a persuasive argument which seduced many. The Blairite Third Way would somehow square the circle by delivering new schools, hospitals, roads, railways and prisons without the debt or inefficiency of the public sector.It seemed too good to be true yet those who dared to question the orthodoxy du jour were swatted away.

As early as 1999, Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, denounced it revealing that repayments would be exorbitant. In the same year, Professor Allyson Pollock and colleagues published a paper sounding the alarm over the potentially disastrous consequences of PFI debt and the financialisation of public services. And in a 2004 long read for Private Eye the late Paul Foot exposed the seedy underbelly of its history.

For a golden period, Gordon Brown’s apparent vanquishment of boom and bust kept any problems in check. But when the financial crisis was followed by the diktats of austerity, PFI began to unravel. South London Healthcare Trust became the first NHS trust to go bust in the summer of 2012, having found itself on the hook for huge PFI costs.
The total bill for NHS PFI hospitals is ultimately projected to rise above £79bn, way in excess of original build costs of £11.4bn.]/b]

^^^^^Still a LABOUR GOVERNMENT

Many PFI contracts came with strings attached, “facilities maintenance” often subcontracted on a long-term basis as part of the deal.As a result, only specific contractors are allowed to change or fix certain equipment or fittings, such as a plug socket or a light bulb. A Daily Telegraph investigation flagged up several egregious examples but this one really stood out: one hospital was charged £52,000 for a job which should have cost £750.

Which IDIOT sanctioned that ^^^^^^

To look at it another way, a quick calculation reveals that the outstanding PFI payments would cover the pay for all the nurses, full-time consultants and GPs for 10 years. There would still be plenty left over to cover the training of the next generation of surgeons and build 80 state-of-the-art hospitals. If you wanted to keep it simple then the PFI debt would cover the entire NHS budget for over 2 years.

Across the NHS, PFI repayments have contributed to hospital mergers, closures and downgrades. Long-time critic of PFI Professor Pollock argues that these mergers will be followed by the final “wave of closures in the run-up to privatisation and franchising out”. She astutely points out the great irony that PFI was once hailed as the largest NHS hospital-building programme; in fact it is likely to end up becoming the largest hospital closure programme.

More at www.independent.co.uk...

Oh what a tangled web has been weaved ......and not all of it down to

the Tories or Boris Johnson, most of it inherited !!!!!!!

originally posted by: UpIsNowDown

Are you sure about that? you are asking for numbers and then not provinding your own, last nurse i spoke to was earning £26,500 (not enough IMO) but are you suggesting that similar pay can be earnt by flipping burgers?

EDIT
my google search shows the following for Burger flippers in McDs

$15,679/yr not sure that is anywhere near the same as a nurse, but hey you believe it to be true

Dollars or did you mean pounds? Either way you are not making much of a case that a collage educated registered nurse who is literally responsible for peoples lives, who is working holidays and weekends, subject to disproportional levels of violence from patients and staff, get little to no breaks, often has to work short or overtime, makes under 10k a year from someone who turns a patty?

a reply to: FredT

I did state none of them are paid enough (it was in brackets), if it was upto myself they would be on over £30000 a year but alas people in parliment get paid more for leading the country down the drain

To put some perspective on things regarding nurse wages and why I run into nurses from the UK and Canada working here all the time:

A few caveats:
Its the SF Bay Area which has some the highest cost of living and wages for nursing in the world
The vast majority of Hospitals are unionzed and represented by CNA (we are one of two independent Unions)
More that 65% of our nurses drive 1-2 hours each way because fo housing costs in the SF Bay Area
California has a minimum staff to patient ratio 1 nurse to patients in the ICU, 1:4 general care areas etc which means less burnout because patient loads are spread out
California has minimum break requirements (for a 12 hour shift 3 15 minute and one 30 minute) and the staffing ratios have to be observed at all times even during breaks which means most unit have an extra nurse just giving breaks all night. Failure to get a break results in finicail penalties paid to the nurse by the employer: Each missed break results in a 1X your base rate penalty per occurrence PLUS the associated doubletime (so lets say I miss one 15 minute break, I get one hour of pay plus 15 minutes of doubletime added to my wages)

The average wage for new graduates with ZERO experience working our our hospital: $68.47 per hour
Full Time is 72 hours every two weeks (6 12 hour shifts) and after the 6 month probationary period that wage hops to $71 per hour.

Full time per year: $132000 (thats base with no voluntary overtime / doubletime
Most New grads work nights which has a 18% differential means $156836

Plus extra pay for weekends holidays etc

Top of scale is well over $100 per hour.

Nurses are better compensated here and we still have some shortages even after poaching nurses from other countries. Its still a difficult, physically demanding job and burnout rates are high. If you guys in the UK are offering meager compensation why in their right mind would go into the field

a reply to: FredT

Compassion is something most people who work in the UK do it for, money is not everything to some people.

originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: EvilAxis

Certainly there is urgent need for reform and restructuring of our health care system, and billions could be saved by reducing the backdoor privatisation introduced by the Conservatives, such as tendering of services in the private sector.

The great PFI heist: The real story of how Britain's economy has been left high and dry by a doomed economic philosophy
Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), recently made an astonishing admission on BBC1’s Question Time when he stated that private finance initiatives (PFI) had been a “fraud on the people” the real story of PFI reveals that RBS alongside other global banks, notably HSBC, were instrumental in what Sir Howard has effectively labelled a great heist.
Of course, PFI was not always a toxic brand. In 1997 it appeared to be New Labour’s magical solution to chronic underinvestment in public services in the wake of Thatcherism.

Take note the ^^^^LABOUR GOVERNMENT^^^^

As Alan Milburn – the former Labour Health Secretary described as an “almost maniacal convert to PFI” – put it: “It’s PFI or bust.”
The argument went that Labour had inherited public services in such a diabolical state of neglect that there was no alternative to the private financing of whole swathes of infrastructure.
It was a persuasive argument which seduced many. The Blairite Third Way would somehow square the circle by delivering new schools, hospitals, roads, railways and prisons without the debt or inefficiency of the public sector.It seemed too good to be true yet those who dared to question the orthodoxy du jour were swatted away.

As early as 1999, Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, denounced it revealing that repayments would be exorbitant. In the same year, Professor Allyson Pollock and colleagues published a paper sounding the alarm over the potentially disastrous consequences of PFI debt and the financialisation of public services. And in a 2004 long read for Private Eye the late Paul Foot exposed the seedy underbelly of its history.

For a golden period, Gordon Brown’s apparent vanquishment of boom and bust kept any problems in check. But when the financial crisis was followed by the diktats of austerity, PFI began to unravel. South London Healthcare Trust became the first NHS trust to go bust in the summer of 2012, having found itself on the hook for huge PFI costs.
The total bill for NHS PFI hospitals is ultimately projected to rise above £79bn, way in excess of original build costs of £11.4bn.]/b]

^^^^^Still a LABOUR GOVERNMENT

Many PFI contracts came with strings attached, “facilities maintenance” often subcontracted on a long-term basis as part of the deal.As a result, only specific contractors are allowed to change or fix certain equipment or fittings, such as a plug socket or a light bulb. A Daily Telegraph investigation flagged up several egregious examples but this one really stood out: one hospital was charged £52,000 for a job which should have cost £750.

Which IDIOT sanctioned that ^^^^^^

To look at it another way, a quick calculation reveals that the outstanding PFI payments would cover the pay for all the nurses, full-time consultants and GPs for 10 years. There would still be plenty left over to cover the training of the next generation of surgeons and build 80 state-of-the-art hospitals. If you wanted to keep it simple then the PFI debt would cover the entire NHS budget for over 2 years.

Across the NHS, PFI repayments have contributed to hospital mergers, closures and downgrades. Long-time critic of PFI Professor Pollock argues that these mergers will be followed by the final “wave of closures in the run-up to privatisation and franchising out”. She astutely points out the great irony that PFI was once hailed as the largest NHS hospital-building programme; in fact it is likely to end up becoming the largest hospital closure programme.

More at www.independent.co.uk...

Oh what a tangled web has been weaved ......and not all of it down to


the Tories or Boris Johnson, most of it inherited !!!!!!!

I take it that you know it was The Conservatives that introduced PFI in 1992 ?

The private finance initiative A private finance initiative is a process by which an NHS organisation can take out loans to pay for infrastructure to increase the provision of healthcare services.

(PFI) was introduced by the Conservative government in 1992, and was adopted and continued by the Labour government upon its election in 1997. PFI involves contracting out the building and operation of public services to private sector companies (Roe and Craig, 2004), and the initiative introduced competition between private providers to build and finance hospitals.

It was intended to take advantage of the greater efficiency and innovation found in the private sector

navigator.health.org.uk...

Labour just continued what The Tories began.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Low band 5 starting wage for a UK nurse is £24'214. Under the recently announced NHS pay increases they will be on £30'112 by year 4 post entry into the NHS. This is basic rate, not including overtime or unsocial hours additional pay which they get for nights/weekends/public holidays etc. (Time + 30% for Saturday or weekday night shift, time + 60% for holidays & Sundays).

Not brilliant, but not terrible.

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: UpIsNowDown

Are you sure about that? you are asking for numbers and then not provinding your own, last nurse i spoke to was earning £26,500 (not enough IMO) but are you suggesting that similar pay can be earnt by flipping burgers?

EDIT
my google search shows the following for Burger flippers in McDs

$15,679/yr not sure that is anywhere near the same as a nurse, but hey you believe it to be true

Dollars or did you mean pounds? Either way you are not making much of a case that a collage educated registered nurse who is literally responsible for peoples lives, who is working holidays and weekends, subject to disproportional levels of violence from patients and staff, get little to no breaks, often has to work short or overtime, makes under 10k a year from someone who turns a patty?

This is what happens when you introduce high minimum wages for unskilled staff. You disincentivise people from entering higher pressure, skilled work. How do you attract someone to a life or death job if you can make almost as much at by asking if you want fries with that?

The only way to address this is to increase skilled wages proportionately, putting further financial pressure on the organisation.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Can't argue with the logic there, after all, some of the poor souls have been known to have to resort to the use of foodbanks.

And that's skilled professionals that are employed.

Much needed people who care for others, as a calling more than a profession, for rather a few who follow the in the field of medical health care.

a reply to: alldaylong

Labour just continued what The Tories began.

So that exonerates Labour of all blame?

They had plenty of time to redress the legislation.....they chose not to so they are equally to blame.

a reply to: Freeborn

So that exonerates Labour of all blame?

I didn't say that.

Just because the Labour Government continued PFI doesn't mean i agreed with it. In fact i didn't. Blair was part Tory as far as i am concerned.

originally posted by: alldaylong

I take it that you know it was The Conservatives that introduced PFI in 1992 ?
(PFI) was introduced by the Conservative government in 1992, and was adopted and continued by the Labour government upon its election in 1997. PFI involves contracting out the building and operation of public services to private sector companies (Roe and Craig, 2004), and the initiative introduced competition between private providers to build and finance hospitals.

Not 1992 but 1993.......

A PFI panel was set up by Chancellor Ken Clarke as early as 1993. It mutated into a taskforce inside HM Treasury and was eventually rebranded as Partnerships UK.

Pressure mounts on Clarke to reform private funding scheme
Michael Harrison
Friday 12 July 1996 00:02
Chancellor Kenneth Clarke came under renewed pressure yesterday to reform the Government's Private Finance Initiative after the Confederation of British Industry called for most small capital projects to be exempted from the scheme.

In a hard-hitting report the CBI said that, henceforth, no project costing less than pounds 10m should have to seek PFI funding before being given the go-ahead.

If the CBI's recommendations are accepted, the PFI would effectively be limited to larger infrastructure projects in the health, transport and environment sectors. Hundreds of small projects costing less than pounds 10m, many of which are Department of Health schemes, would slip through the net, leaving them to be funded conventionally through the Government's capital expenditure budget.

^^^That^^^ was 1996 ...... No PFI had been implemented then

The Labour government came in the following year and started using PFI.

And Tony Blair started spending like a man with no arms, which managed

to keep him in power for a further two elections, and the money cupboard

was bare.

As Alan Milburn – the former Labour Health Secretary

described as an “almost maniacal convert to PFI” – put it: “It’s PFI or bust.”

www.independent.co.uk...

Labour just continued what The Tories began.

The Tories only set up a panel in the treasury Partnership UK.

It was the Blair labour government that signed up to it

a reply to: eletheia


Not sure where you are getting your information.

31 October 1996 – First PFI hospital opens in Scotland Ferryfield House, a £32 million community hospital for the treatment of patients with dementia opens its doors in Edinburgh. It is the first of many NHS facilities to be provided through PFI

pfeyeblog.wordpress.com...

Which party was in government in 1996 ?

a reply to: alldaylong

Seems to me your trying to lay the blame for all the NHS faults at the Tory doorstep.
That's typical of everything that is wrong with UK politics.

The reality is that both major party's have allowed standards to deteriorate and have turned a blind eye to the rampant mismanagement, serial wastage, under-funding and a mountain of other faults.

And how anyone could trust either/any of them to deliver on any of their election promises regarding the NHS is beyond me; naivety of the highest order.

The NHS needs to be taken out of the sphere of influence of politicians, funding ring fenced and managed professionally.

a reply to: Freeborn

But almost a decade, and all that jazz.

End of the day there has, and is, a stealth eugenics war being waged against our poor, sick, and mentally infirm.

Near enough 150,000 people now dead Freeborn, and gone, down to Tory austerity jizz.

It's not just sad, its deplorable.

They will deliver on the election promises, but not the ones we are privy to.

As an American I was going to stay out of this discussion but I have one really important question. If this is not a staged photo, then why are they trying to kill the kid?

The IV bag or drip bag is full of air and not solution as it should be or flat as the fluid empties out. If this is connected to the kid, with a needle in his vein, as it would be in use, there is a great risk of an air bubble going into his vein, causing an air embolism and giving the kid a stroke or outright killing him. I don’t think the IV bag or drip bag is in use and has been inflated and placed there to be a prop for the photo.

Looks staged to me.

a reply to: Freeborn

Seems to me your trying to lay the blame for all the NHS faults at the Tory doorstep

You are entitled to your opinion as i am mine.

The Tories have never been fans of The NHS, they see it as a necessary inconvenience. They voted against it's conception.

originally posted by: alldaylong
31 October 1996 – First PFI hospital opens in Scotland Ferryfield House, a £32 million community hospital for the treatment of patients with dementia opens its doors in Edinburgh. It is the first of many NHS facilities to be provided through PFI

As far as I am aware and as Nicola Sturgeon keeps on telling us that the Scots

have their own NHS which is better than England's.

I was referring to the Westminster government and there are links for all my

quotes on my posts.