My friends currently spending time with me made the point last night it was refreshing to see how well behaved the kids were in our local pizza barn thing. All respectful to each other and other people plus they all sit and eat a meal, involved with different generations. We agreed much rare to see that in the U.K. Drink imo is out of control in the U.K. and has a massive effect on cultures
Bit harsh on our kids - yeah some can be pains in the bum but I doubt most are that different to their French counterparts when they're in places other than macdonalds. I certainly don't see serial anti social behaviour from masses of them.
Buying a house to make money as opposed to somewhere you can live is an issue as is the alcohol culture which leads to repeat visits to A& E. Is it time that some bright spark in Whitehall, you know the ones, clueless and lacking in any experience of real life, actually suggested passing legislation which would enable the NHS to place a charge over the property owned by the miscreant?. As Goldie says the 15 year old who makes a mistake is an exception - we can all have one free no expense spared trip to casualty to learn our lesson, but after that we pay. If students are going to be saddled with debt for the rest of their lives why not those who regularly drink to excess.
I tend to agree, but then do you also charge smokers for their lung cancer treatment? What about charging for treatment of sports injuries? I heard that the government was considering banning potholing, because the rescues of those that get stuck are so expensive. I don't think that would work, though. If they banned potholing, it would just go underground.
You draw a line somewhere which can be changed by amendment until you strike the right balance.. The smoker who contracts lung cancer has only him/herself to blame if having been treated successfully then refuses to give up. By all means treat the first time but after that if the person ignores all medical advice because s/he is too weak-willed, selfish, or as some might call it addicted, further treatment when the cancer returns should be at his/her expense. Sports injuries? Last I heard playing sport was not a cause of anti-social behaviour, abuse and violence and the injury is normally the result of an accident rather than deliberate choice to injury yourself or someone else. Love the pun by the way although I missed it on first reading due to lack of exclamation marks or inverted commas.
Why not go radical and simply levy a fee for attending the GP & A&E as they do in most countries? Doesn't have to be a huge sum, say a tenner or twenty quid, funds for NHS and a bit of taking responsibilty for your actions........ Probably never catch on......
If you crash your car or fall off a ladder then no treatment till your credit card is accepted Most hospital treatment is avoidable Charge everyone then you can afford to drop the taxes on booze and ***s
The line has to be drawn between accidents and deliberate acts. Treatment is never refused but an invoice follows for deliberate acts eg serial binge drinking unless the patient is taking substantial steps to resolve the problem. I believe binge eaters are already being pushed to the back of queues for new knees etc unless they take steps to address their eating problem.
How many miles over the speed limit before the accident becomes deliberate How many words into a text message before a pedestrian falling over takes responsibility for their own actions Etc etc
We learn by trial and error and modify the law if it proves to be too harsh but as my speed awareness course instructor kept pointing out to his audience of mild transgressors, speed limits are there for a reason. It is precisely the unexpected which you need to be alert for and texting is completely unacceptable when driving a car. You give the example of the pedestrian falling over, perhaps drunk perhaps slipping on an icy road, whatever. That gets taken into account as a potential defence if you are given no chance to react before impact or at the very least as mitigating circumstances. Don't confuse the drunk falling over having to take responsibility for his own actions with the culpability or otherwise of the speeding driver and the reckless texter. This is fun. You have 18 questions left.
I think the emphasis has to be on repetition, and readiness to accept help. Thus, when someone does something regularly that takes up valuable ambulance and A & E time that would otherwise be available to someone seriously ill, and does nothing to curb this unwelcome practice or accept help. This is binge drinking in a nutshell, which also leads to antisocial behaviour, urinating and vomiting in the hospital, and violence against NHS staff, and increases the need for the NHS to spend valuable funds on security staff. In many ways, this drink problem is out there on its own. Even drugs are different - you don't get many heroin users taking a daily or weekly overdose and beating up the NHS staff that come out to help. With the NHS increasingly in financial crisis, the government needs to take steps to resolve this waste of medical staff time due to irresponsible and often hedonistic practices. The drunk tanks may help take pressure off A&E. NHS staff that work in them will need a strong stomach. If someone has a serious drink problem, specialist help should be available to help them get their lives back on track.
I’ve already been told that on a Friday or Saturday night, the vast majority of call outs I’ll get will be drink related and that I should be prepared to be both physically and verbally abused by the people I’m there to help......meanwhile the little old lady with difficulties has to wait her turn while I deal with that. It’s a sad indictment of our society.
It is indeed a sad indictment of our society, and best of luck with your imminent shifts, Stainsey. I'd be interested to hear how you get on. NHS staff seem to be conditioned to accept that abuse thrown at them through alcohol is part of the job. The problem needs to be addressed at a high level.
Well I’ve got the 22 weeks of relative sanity in training to pass first ( which is no gimme) but I’ll definitely be glad to share my experiences, both good and bad. Yeah I think we are told early on what to expect and go into the job with open eyes....I’d love to think I’ll be the ‘knight in shining armour’ on every call and be lauded as a hero every minute....but truthfully I know this aint the case and that I am at some point gonna get assaulted in some way......sadly I realise that’s part of the job.
My wife is a nurse, and worked in surgical wards for 18 years dealing with the cases that A&E pass upstairs. She has been both physically and vebally abused by drunks, junkies, dementia patients and relatives coming to visit - the hospital has a zero tolerance towards all abuse towards staff, and each case is referred to the Police, and whilst many get away with a.warning of their future conduct, quite a few get charged and sent to court, where the local judge is quite strict. She now works as a nurse in the local prison, with many violent offenders, murderers, rapists, ex-alcoholics and junkies, and says she's never felt safer!!
I don't think you can refer dementia patients to the police but I understand the tough job nurses and doctors have.
It's a difficult question as to where the line of diminished responsibilty lies, and thankfully it's one that I don't have to judge on! Just because they have dementia, is it ok for them to assault nurses and doctors, or members of their own families? I've seen nurses with black eyes and broken noses because they've been hit, is that acceptable?
Lord Adonis resignation letter in full: "Dear Prime Minister, The hardest thing in politics is to bring about lasting change for the better, and I believe in working together across parties to achieve this. In that spirit I was glad to accept reappointment by you last year as Chair of the independent National Infrastructure Commission, when you also reaffirmed your support for HS2, which will help overcome England’s north-south divide when it opens in just eight years time. I would like to thank you for your courtesy in our personal dealings. The Commission has done useful work in the past 27 months, thanks to highly dedicated public servants and commissioners. Sir John Armitt, my deputy chair, and Phil Graham, as chief executive, have been brilliant fellow pioneers from the outset. I am particularly proud of our work on HS3 to link the Northern cities and Crossrail 2 for London, and our plans for the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor. All these will be transformational if taken forward without delay. However, I am afraid I must now step down, because of fundamental policy differences – on infrastructure and beyond – which simply can’t be bridged. Your decision to rupture British membership of Europe’s key economic and political institutions is the most important. The European Union Withdrawal Bill is the worst legislation of my lifetime. It arrives soon in the House of Lords and I feel duty bound to oppose it relentlessly from the Labour benches. Brexit is a dangerous populist and nationalist spasm worthy of Donald Trump. After the narrow referendum vote for an undefined proposition to ‘leave the EU,’ it could have been attempted without rupturing our essential European trade and political relations. However, by becoming the voice of UKIP and the extreme nationalist right-wing of your party, you have taken a different course, for which you have no parliamentary or popular mandate. You are attempting to wrench Britain out of the key economic and political institutions of modern Europe, erecting barriers between people and trade even within Ireland. If this happens, taking us back into Europe become the mission of our childrens’ generation, who will marvel at your wanton destruction. A responsible government should be seeking to persuade the British people to stay in Europe while also tackling, with massive vigour, the social and economic problems within Britain which led to the narrow referendum result of eighteen months ago, particularly in our many desperately poor towns, cities and regions. Your policy is the opposite. The Government is hurtling towards the EU’s emergency exit with no credible plan for the future of Britain’s trade and European co-operation, while ignoring – beyond soundbites and inadequate programmes – the crisis of housing, education, the NHS and social and regional inequality which are undermining the fabric of our nation and feeding the populism which led to Brexit. What Britain needs in 2018 is a radical reforming government in the tradition of Attlee which works tirelessly to eradicate social problems, while strengthening Britain’s international alliances. This is a cause I have long advocated and acted upon in government and I intend to pursue it with all the energy I can muster. Britain needs to be deeply engaged, responsible and consistent in its European policy. When we have failed to be so in the past, the security and prosperity of our Continent have been in jeopardy – inevitably so, given our power and our embodiment of the values of parliamentary democracy. For Her Majesty’s Government, there is no such thing as ‘splendid isolation’: and when Lord Salisbury, among your most short-sightedly cynical predecessors, pronounced this as British policy in the imperial late-Victorian era, it was followed within barely a decade by the First World War and what was, in effect, a 30-year European war between the forces of democracy on the one hand, and Communism and extreme nationalism on the other. The stakes may not appear so high as this moment, but no-one observing Putin’s Russia, and the rise authoritarian nationalism in Poland and Hungary, can doubt the resonances with the past or the dangers ahead. As Edmund Burke so wisely wrote, ‘people will not not look forwards to posterity who do not look backwards to their ancestors.’ However, I would anyway have been forced to resign from the Commission at this point because of the Transport Secretary’s extraordinary decision to bail-out Stagecoach and Virgin on the East Coast rail franchise. This bailout will cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds, possibly billions as other loss-making rail companies demand equal treatment, endangering the entire national infrastructure investment programme. It is increasingly clear that the bailout is a nakedly political manoeuvre by Chris Grayling in defiance of his public duty. It would be an act of cavalier irresponsibility even were public resources not so constrained, and is the more so in the context of Brexit. Mr Grayling’s policy appears to be motivated above all by a refusal, for purely political reasons, to follow my precedent of 2009 in the case of National Express and the same East Coast franchise. I set up a public company to take over the franchise once the private operator defaulted on its obligations to the state because it had over-bid for the contract, and the same should have been done in this case. The circumstances are very similar. The decision to bail out Stagecoach/Virgin will inevitably come under close scrutiny by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, and I need to be free to set out serious public interest concerns. I hope the PAC calls Sir Richard Branson and Sir Brian Souter to give evidence soon, given the gravity of the financial losses to the taxpayer. I stand ready to give evidence to the PAC and other parliamentary committees at their convenience, and to share with them substantial relevant evidence. As you know, I raised these issues directly with the Chancellor and Transport Secretary immediately after the bailout became apparent from the small print of an odd policy statement on 29 November majoring on reversing of Beeching rail closures of the 1960s. I received no response from either Minister beyond inappropriate requests to desist. Brexit is causing a nervous breakdown across Whitehall and conduct unworthy of Her Majesty's Government. I am told, by those of longer experience, that it resembles Suez and the bitter industrial strife of the 1970s, both of which endangered not only national integrity but the authority of the state itself. You occupy one of the most powerful offices in the history of the world, the heir of Churchill, Attlee and Gladstone. Whatever our differences, I wish you well in guiding our national destiny at this critical time."
