With so many problems in this country at the current time, it is difficult to descend on one area when our problems are so multi-faceted, but one sticks with what one knows about and at a time in life when like so many we rely on health services a lot more than even in the recent past.
Nonetheless as with so many other areas we also spend an awful lot of money and as elsewhere we do not get value for our money despite pouring ever more into it, so much is wasted and poorly distributed.
The truth is we or rather successive governments have made little effort to either stop or control the incoming hordes and have allowed the country to grow to a size where none of the services and infrastructure can cope, and it is a fact that almost everything has been neglected.
My personal opinion is it has all gone too far to be remedied, from roads to power/energy, water services, defence and of course the NHS. The task to bring it all up to even an acceptable standard is probably beyond the country now and we certainly do not have the money to even start. If I sound defeatist it is because along with many others I have witnessed a governing class that diminished in quality over time to the point where the current cabinet is full of people who quite frankly could not run a bath, never mind the lying, fraudulent, and criminal among them .
But I digress. In the local paper this week the MP for SW Norfolk, one Terry Jermy (!) has written to the health secretary about the ‘profound problems’ facing all of the region’s health services. The hospital at Kings Lynn has had serious structural problems for years now, in fact parts are held up with permanent scaffolding, and the medical side has been described by inspectors as below par.
‘The hospital was ordered to make urgent improvements earlier this week, following a damning report by watchdog the care Quality Commission over a decline in standards in the urgent and emergency care it delivers.’
No doubt the health secretary will put on her most ‘concerned face’ and do absolutely nothing as is the norm for her over the years.
The NHS desperately needs someone with the knowledge and the clout to start a change without any vested interests in his/her way. In today’s melange of mediocrity there is no one waiting in the wings to take it all on, so I fear we have to accept the waiting lists will continue, the GP surgeries will stay the reserve of those with IT nous, and the A&E depts will have sick people sitting on the floor and treated in corridors for years to come.
And yet so many of the front line staff are excellent. From what I have heard in conversation they are as frustrated with it all as much as we are. Sadly we are losing many and they are not being replaced by those who have qualified and can’t get a job in the NHS because the NHS is using cheaper imported staff instead, many of whom should not be in the job - I have seen far to many who fit that category though some are excellent and actually speak English !
As I said before there is something terribly wrong in recruitment within the NHS as this example shows. My own experience when at Her Majesty’s pleasure i.e. in hospital and speaking to nurses revealed the same in England.
Cheap labour over British trained staff is not a recipe for the future, if there is a future for the NHS.
There was a letter in the local paper from a doctor who had been taken to A&E by his wife. He claimed that we should be protesting about the wait times to be seen; one would have assumed that a doctor would know that the wait times are common knowledge. He was lucky in having a wife who somehow managed to get him seen to - no mention of a normal six-hour wait or having to sit on the floor as I have witnessed by about 30 poor souls who would rather not be there and no waiting four hours for an ambulance because they are forced to be used as auxiliary waiting areas in the car park, another four hours added to the inside wait.
We are being lied to regards the NHS. Nothing of note has taken place since this government came to power. The bright light that was Wes Streeting and his promises turned out to be a Toc H lamp and he slunk off to achieve greater things or am I imagining that, and was replaced by the most anodyne resemblance to a Tussauds figure in James Murray who after two months in the post during which he was invisible, then moved onto greater things (is there a pattern here ?) as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General, God help us, and he was replaced by the perennial ‘I can do anything’ Yvette Cooper who apart from mastering a ‘concerned’ look has never achieved anything of note. This is not what the NHS needs or warrants. I give you her first ‘really concerned’ look, she has mastered this:
Meanwhile she has added a ‘Health Innovation Secretary’ to her team; as usual it does not look promising.
Re the ambulance saga, this from the London Ambulance service is performative cobblers, as so few are actually arriving within a time frame that could be considered ‘reasonable’.
All things being equal this would be a plus, but this is just pie in the sky in relation to everyday performance that people/patients suffer.
Approximately 319 senior managers in NHS trusts have base salary entitlements between £200,000 and £300,000, with a further 292 receiving total remuneration packages above £300,000.
The NHS has 41,000 more managers than it did in 2010. Where is the increase in NHS performance? There isn’t any, all is in decline. These problems are there for all to see yet all we get is promises that are not fulfilled. The recent maternity units scandal is the latest area to show dramatic shortcomings, again this has been going on for a long time.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(25)00307-2/fulltext
And then there is the huge problem of care for the elderly which is largely ignored as the elderly are easy to ignore as they don’t raise a stink like other sectors.
The endless announcements that the NHS puts out are distractions from the fact that they are mainly a shot item. We are left with this: a number of hubs to treat mental illness will be rolled out. Only one fault with that: “Walk-in mental health centres are to open in two types of location that are closing faster than any other.” More than 100 mental health centres are to open in libraries and banks - as Burnham vows to bring NHS services ‘closer to home.’” Sometimes you just could not make it up but they continue, saying “These will effectively operate as PIP recruitment centres, packed with leaflets and advisers ready to hold your hand through your claim.“
From BanksyCat on X:
“Andy Burnham has FORM.
The man now asking to FIX social care is the same man who was Health Secretary when hundreds DIED at Mid Staffs.
Watch him in that care home, describing corridor care and dying patients like a horrified witness. He wasn't a witness. He was the HEALTH SECRETARY. Some of this didn't happen TO him. It happened UNDER him.
Hundreds died at Stafford amid appalling neglect. Two nurses to forty patients in places. And when grieving families BEGGED for a full public inquiry, he resisted it. It took the next government to grant one.
Heres the part that tells you who he is. An inquiry witness testified that when the death data looked bad, Burnham wanted the message "made more politically ACCEPTABLE." The expert who uncovered Mid Staffs said his work was "suppressed" and called the department "a denial machine."
Manage the message. Soften the bad news. Bury the truth.”
Click on the link above for the full message and the video.
Difficult to believe that none of this and more has been scrutinised before his well-planned coup to become the next PM.
By a stroke of luck I had an actual appointment given to me by the local surgery. This was a follow-up arranged before the change by government diktat that I was told about by the senior doctor I saw on arrival. The saga in the new appointment regime is a multi-pronged farce; whoever is responsible probably has private health insurance, yes Minister.
For those who believe there is no two-tier health service here is this from Rupert Lowe MP As usual he hits the nail on the head, no wonder he is loathed by the House of Commons regulars:
In July, the British Dental Association condemned comments I made on Joe Rogan stating that illegal migrants receive priority access to NHS dental treatment - they demanded I apologise. I told them where to go at the time, but we have since been doing some digging...
It turns out I was entirely right. Illegals ARE getting priority dental care, and actually?
It’s so much worse than we released...
Here’s the evidence.
Restore Britain’s investigations unit has obtained NHS documents marked ‘Official-Sensitive’ which discuss the level of dental care that needs to be provided in Immigration Removal Centres (IRC).
Let’s go through it…
‘To enable a positive experience of dental services, dental services will be patient centred, and patients should be given the opportunity to play an active role in shaping and assessing the service.’
Right. These are illegal migrants, remember.
This is a real sentence in the document…
‘Ensure the service recognises the inequalities faced by the detained individuals and proactively aims to reduce the inequalities therein’
Total and utter bullshit.
Moving on…
‘The service will provide detained individuals within the IRC with high quality dental care, prioritised according to dental need’
High quality dental care.
It gets worse…
‘all detained individuals are provided with comprehensive information on how to access dental services, the treatment they are entitled to and how to initiate an appointment. This information should be available in multiple languages and include formats to support neurodiverse patients.’
Foreign language translation for dental care for illegal migrants. Utterly ludicrous.
Up next…
‘detained individuals requiring urgent care for dental pain and minor trauma have access to a dentist within 48 hours’
48 hours. For dental pain. Far better than what millions and millions of Brits get.
‘The core service will operate 365 days a year.’
Obviously...
It ‘may include utilisation of a hygienist and/or dental therapist.’ Very nice...
‘If an individual is released from the IRC back to a community in England’ they are provided with support.
So once the illegals are let back into the community, they still get help. It is INSANE.
They have quality performance indicators to meet, including the percentage of those happy with the care and the waiting time.
Patient satisfaction for the illegals is incredibly important, obviously.
A Restore Britain Government will scrap all of it. No more. They arrived without a toothbrush, we are not going to provide one.
They will be deported.
Not some of them. Not most of them. All of them.
Gone, and never allowed back.
I am calling on the British Dental Association to apologise for their inaccurate remarks, and release all and any information they hold on treatment provided to illegal migrants.
More FOIs and investigations are already underway, and we will continue digging for the truth.
I will promise you one thing.
Restore Britain will end the piss take.
Another take on the NHS ambulance service, which seems to be able to gather in great haste and great numbers for visible emergencies but goes missing for routine call outs:
As I have said before this is not the fault of the ambulance crews but their management.
And to finish, a speech from the new PM who really cares. The death tax is being muted, once again those who saved those who worked for a decent retirement will be taxed to death to fund those who never did any of those things but will receive the same treatment or care.
All of this can be mulled over and discussed while having a cup of tea and a sandwich - or maybe not if it is an NHS sandwich:
Three patients dead after food poisoning linked to UK hospital pre-packed sandwiches
https://operatingroomissues.org/three-patients-dead-after-food-poisoning-linked-to-uk-hospital-pre-packed-sandwiches/
