Coming soon: Campaigning against Con-Dem scum
I intend to start properly campaigning against Conservative and Liberal-Democrat scum and invite other bloggers and online activists to do likewise.
NHS news review
Heir to Bleir David Cameron is confirmed as being divorced from reality and full of shit.
It’s official: Cameron and the ConDem coalition government is cutting spending on the NHS. The Independent on Sunday reports that UK Prime Minister David Cameron breaks promise to increase spending on the NHS in real terms.
‘The official analysis from the House of Commons Library – which is independent of political parties – shows that in real terms, when inflation is taken into account, NHS spending fell by £800m in 2010-11.
The Prime Minister, whose party manifesto at the last election pledged to “increase health spending every year”, has gone out of his way to say the coalition government would protect frontline health cash.
In June Mr Cameron launched five NHS “guarantees you can hold me to and that I will be personally accountable for” – including “not to cut spending on the NHS, but to increase it”.
Yet Labour has claimed that the Treasury’s own figures reveal a cut in real terms in NHS spending from £102.8bn in 2009-10 to £102bn. Mr Cameron and the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, reject the claims, based on the Treasury’s July 2011 Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA).
The shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, asked the Commons library to analyse the data and received the following information: “NHS total expenditure [fell] from £102.8bn in 2009-10 to £102.0bn in 2010-11 (in 2010-11 prices, rounded to nearest £0.1bn) – a real terms fall of 0.7 per cent.”
Mr Burnham said that another ministerial claim – that the PESA figures had not been adjusted according to the GDP deflator – rang hollow since the Treasury document made clear they were adjusted.
Mr Burnham has called on Simon Burns, the health services minister, to correct a statement to the Commons last week in which he said: “We gave a commitment in our election manifesto to provide a real-terms increase in funding in every year of the Parliament while we are in government – the lifetime of this Parliament. We have honoured that, and we will continue to do so in subsequent years.”
Mr Burnham told The Independent on Sunday: “It is official: David Cameron cut the NHS budget in his first year as Prime Minister despite promising he wouldn’t.
“He has inflicted the first real-terms cut in NHS spending for 14 years – the last being in the final year of the Major government.
“David Cameron stands at the dispatch box week after week claiming to have increased NHS spending. His hollow rhetoric will grate with NHS staff facing the reality of redundancies and patients who are being told they must wait longer for treatment. He is hopelessly out of touch.
“Cameron ruthlessly used the NHS to detoxify the Tory brand. But, one by one, he is breaking all the promises he made. He promised no top-down reorganisation, but launched the biggest since 1948.
“He promised a moratorium on hospital changes but is closing A&E and maternity departments up and down the land. He promised not to cut the NHS, but has done just that in his first year in office.”‘
27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.
I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
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Actually, this post in the public interest as a record.
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dizzy
NHS news review
Prime Minister David Cameron may become known as the man who destroyed the NHS.
NHS spending cuts put babies at risk
Private sector supports Clinical Commissioning Groups.
GPs concerned that they may lose maternity pay
- Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat (Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
New Statesman – NHS reform is a never-ending nightmare for Cameron
The Prime Minister could end up with a reputation as the man who broke the NHS.
The NHS bill cleared a legislative hurdle in the Lords this week . But that doesn’t really solve any of the political problems facing the government’s reforms. Of those problems, one of the biggest is that the coalition doesn’t seem to have a clear grasp of why Andrew Lansley’s plans are causing so much difficulty.
The one thing everyone can agree on is that the plans have been appallingly presented. Lansley cooked them up in the Department of Health without much input or scrutiny from Downing Street. (So blindsided was the prime minister that the episode triggered a whole re-organisation of the Number 10 policy operation earlier this year.) According to one senior civil servant at the heart of the operation, when Cameron was first presented with Lansley’s plan he skimmed the introduction and then turned to his aides in shock and disbelief and said “have you read this stuff?!” He had, until then, had no idea of the scale of what was being planned.
There was a moment, towards the end of January, when a u-turn was still an option. But Cameron feared looking weak by abandoning such a huge public sector policy drive – and, reasonably enough, worried that dropping the reforms would implicitly confirm voters’ suspicions that the Tories had some hidden agenda on health. A u-turn would make it look as if they had been rumbled. The way senior figures in government tell the story, Cameron’s foot hovered between the brake and the accelerator, finally choosing the latter. That now looks like a huge mistake.
The essential miscalculation was the PM’s assumption that if he personally threw some weight behind the cause – deploying the powers of persuasion in which he has considerable confidence – the public mood might shift. Of course, the Conservatives did not count on a Lib Dem backlash, sanctioned from the top of the party as a device to “differentiate” the junior coalition partner (fearful of losing its identity) over an issue of famous toxicity to the Tories. Some of the Lib Dem turbulence around the NHS earlier this year was principled objection to the reforms but some is retaliation for the Tories’ personal attacks on Nick Clegg during the referendum campaign on the alternative vote. The compromise package that ended up before the Lords this week was therefore a mangled monster consisting of the original Lansley plan with heaps of ad hoc Lib Dem caveats, brakes, disruptions and supposed safeguards.
And there lies the government’s problem. The reform it is now trying to sell is the expression of Westminster political choreography and not a coherent response to the needs of the health service. Everyone in the NHS knows it and voters can sense it.
…
NHS cuts putting vulnerable babies at risk, says charity | Society | The Guardian
Special care baby charity Bliss warns about qualifications of some nurses and midwives in hospital neonatal units
More than half of England’s specialist baby care units do not meet the government’s minimum standards and are putting the most vulnerable babies at risk, a charity warned on Monday.
Bliss, a special care baby charity, said staff cuts in a third of England’s 172 neonatal units were “significantly affecting the care of premature and sick babies”.
Minimum standards set by the Department of Health require 70% of nurses and midwives in neonatal units to be qualified in specialist care, Bliss said, but more than half had failed to meet this target. Last year, the charity said 1,150 extra nurses would be needed to reach minimum standards, but a recent freedom of information request by the charity found 140 posts had been cut.
In addition, it said that while 450 nurses needed to receive extra training to meet the department’s standards, one in 10 units said they were struggling to release staff for training because of budget cuts.
Andy Cole, chief executive at Bliss, said: “The government’s assurances that frontline services would not be affected by changes in the NHS is not true for these most vulnerable patients. The government and the NHS must take responsibility now and ensure our tiniest and sickest babies receive the highest standard of care at this critical time in their lives.”
Bliss reported that about 20% of neonatal units were likely to make further cuts to their workforce in the next 12 months, through redundancies, vacancy freezes and down-banding posts.
Janet Davies, executive director of nursing at the Royal College of Nursing, said the findings were deeply shocking and called for a stronger strategy.
“At a time when extra nurses are needed to meet even the most basic standards of neonatal care, some [NHS] trusts are making reckless cuts to posts, which will undoubtedly have an impact on the care of premature and sick babies,” she said.
“Sadly, this is a reflection on what is happening throughout the NHS, where we know that 40,000 posts are earmarked to be lost. It is critical that hospitals have the right numbers of specialist nurses, who can provide one-to-one care to premature babies and support for families at an extremely stressful time in their lives. Equally, a properly funded strategy is now urgently needed to recruit and retain more of these specialist nurses.”
…
Clinical commissioning groups representing several thousand GPs across London have signed a multi-million pound deal with private consultants handpicked by NHS bosses to help support the rollout of GP commissioning.
The £7m landmark deal has seen 31 CCGs sign contracts for a programme of ‘intensive organisational support’ for commissioning from the likes of KPMG, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Capita and McKinsey, which has formed a joint partnership with the RCGP’s Centre for Commissioning and consultancy Ashridge Alliancce to advise CCGs ahead of authorisation.
NHS London said all 38 of the capital’s pathfinders were expected to sign up to the ‘development framework’ within weeks, and that £3.7m had been allocated for ‘leadership training’ for managers and clinicians.
The list of approved commissioning partners, which also includes Ernst and Young, Capsticks Solictors, Binder Dijker Otte, and Entrusted Health Partnership, was drawn up by NHS London after a competitive tender designed to provide CCGs with assistance in organisational development, leadership training, strategy, finance and market analysis.
The consultants will offer CCGs coaching, leadership plans, resources and how-to guides, 360 degree feedback, self-assessment tools and organisational development plans to assess their readiness for authorisation.
The move significantly boosts the private sector’s stake in advising GP commissioners, after Pulse first revealed earlier this year that dozens of CCGs had enlisted the support of McKinsey and Pricewaterhouse Coopers with QIPP, budget holding and governance.
…
GPs fear maternity pay could ‘disappear’ under NHS reforms | GPonline.com
MWF president Dr Clarissa Fabre said funding for practices to cover the cost of locums for partners on maternity leave was under threat.
It was unclear whether clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) or the NHS Commissioning Board would be responsible for the payments once PCTs were abolished, she said.
‘At present, at least you know the PCT will pay a bit of the locum payments,’ Dr Fabre said. But she warned that in future CCG budgets could be so tight that they could no longer afford to pay them.
‘Locum payments are going to disappear,’ she said.
NHS Confederation acting deputy chief executive David Stout said he could not be sure who would be responsible for the payments once PCTs no longer existed.
But he suggested that because the NHS Commissioning Board (NCB) will hold GP contracts, it could take control of maternity payments as a part of this role.
Maternity locum payments are not mandatory under current rules, with some PCTs choosing not to pay.
Mr Stout said if the payments became the responsibility of the NCB, it would have a single national policy on maternity locum payments. ‘It’s unlikely that they’d do it inconsistently,’ he said.
GPC member Dr Helena McKeown said it was still unclear who would be responsible for the payments. She said a single policy would be welcome to eliminate the current postcode lottery.
You’d better run, You’d better take cover
I want it recorded in no uncertain terms that I totally oppose the Health and Social Care Bill.
I was hoping to make a threat but then I’m now just quoting lyrics of a song off the radio.
Recent opposition groups are going for a 99% / 1% analysis. It’s useful although it’s only a start. Being a capable analyst, I have a far much better analysis .e.g. I am able to catch the nuances of 7/7 commentary (I know).
Anyaway, please be assured that I am totally opposed the ‘Health and Social Care Bill’ / Destroy the NHS Bill.
The sorry of Cligg and Surf
Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. It is four, five or six generations ago ~ according to how young your family went about it. This is relatively recent in our history and it is worth asking grandparents and great-grandparents about their recollections. Many of them may have worked “in service” – in service to the rich who had it much easier.
The Victorian era saw chiden as young as five engaged in industry. This is when children were sent up chimneys to clean them and actally far more dangerous jobs. The concept of childhood ~ individuals excused from working was a later concept.
Then – as now – you were born rich or poor. Then – as now – you were born very rich or very poor. This has largely continued into the current era except that the industrial revolution has had an effect. There continue to be those born into riduculously rich families and then there are the rest of us.
In the Victorian era – that many of the rich shits want to recreate (and actually in many way persists) – there was service. Poor people would be “in service”. They would be the servants in a rich household. There were benefits to being “in service” – you would get fed and have shelter. There were also disadvantages since you were ‘servicing’ the rich on demand.
It is in this historical context – the Upstairs-Downstairs society – that I bring you my short story.
Squire Cligg’s butler Surf suddenly became ill. Surf was only in his twenties and surely had another twenty year’s service to bestow on his master Cligg. Surf was so ill that he couldn’t perform his duties. Surf had a fever, lethargy and didn’t have any energy to organise the household staff.
Cligg, summoned a temporary, contract butler while Surf recuperated. It was very lucky for Cligg that his household cook Scullion – as well as being an excellent cook was also wise in the arts of nursing. She cared for Surf and nursed him back to health. She wasn’t so skilled to determine actaully what was wrong with Surf but knew how to look after sick people and get them well.
Surf recovered after a few weeks and returned to duty and the household returned to normal. That is it returned to normal except that Squire Lonsley had heard about the household cook Scullion’s nursing qualities and had acquired her according to the rules of the market. Cligg instructed Surf to get another cook. “The market will provide”, he said.
Surf went to the market and managed to find a cook. The new cook Marcuse was a pretty good cook, although a bit continental, but didn’t have any nursing or curing abilities. Surf suggested to his master Cligg “Should we get a nurse too?”. “No bollocks, the market will provide” was his answer.
The following week Cligg got Surf’s illness and died.