Waiting times and general service levels improved dramatically under the Blair/Brown government. It's gone backwards under the Tories.
"I'm afraid to tell you there is no money. Kind regards - and good luck! Liam. 6 April 2010." Note to the new Con-Lib coalition by Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Gordon Brown, upon leaving office after 12 years of Labour Government
How would you know? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/14/nhs-holds-on-to-top-spot-in-healthcare-survey
You Tories have no sense of humour. There's plenty of money, Goldie. We just need to stop wasting it on Trident and the like and stop slippery ****ers avoiding tax.
No sense of humour? I've been laughing at Byrne ever since that note was publicised! Agree about the slippery tax ****ers, Strolls, but for me, Trident's a necessary evil while we have Russia building up its arsenal, North Korea perfecting nuclear warheads on far-reaching missiles and ISIS trying to get hold of a dirty bomb.
Spot on. 1. what that bloke did leaving the note was disgusting and showed just how much he thought of the country. 2. Trident is vital to our security. If Comrade Corbyn ever got in we would have Russians marching up Whitehall.
I agree that Labour are likely to give the NHS more real terms cash than the Tories, although how they would have fared during the economic crisis would be interesting to know. The NHS is the ‘best’ in certain measures, especially in terms of what we get for what we spend, but at the rather daft survey makes clear, we are 10th out of 11 in the only measure that counts - healthcare outcomes. And this has been the same for decades, despite the Blair years where we climbed off the bottom of the GDP spend on health League tables for a bit. Just look at our cancer outcomes - getting a bit better, but despite nearly 20 years of this being a ‘priority’ still well behind our friends in Western Europe. I reckon this is partly down to organisation of services, but mainly late diagnosis, which is because most of us Brits don’t trot off to the GP at every opportunity, only when we are close to keeling over and it’s too late. The Spanish seem to visit the doctor if they feel a cool breeze and think they have a ‘chill on the liver’ (seriously, after 25 years in Madrid my little brother is in and out of the doctors all the time, he’s gone native). Also something really odd going on in primary care. Recently changed GP practice from the one in town in crappy old premises, where you can never get an appointment for a week, they don’t do travel injections without 2 months notice and where the nurse overweighed me by a stone on a health check, to the one in newish premises the same distance (walk) from my house but in the opposite direction. Daughter needed an appointment, phoned at 8.30 yesterday morning, was offered 10.00 the same day, settled on 4.40 after school, in and out in 15 minutes. I asked a neighbour who is a GP (works in a different practice) what was going on and he reckoned basic organisation, plus the first place having too many patients on its list, but not advising any to go elsewhere because they are paid, partly, by the head. Boris or Jeremy can give the NHS an extra £5bn tomorrow and it won’t magic up more staff and facilities out of thin air. A long term cross party approach is needed and we are nowhere near even talking about that. An NHS planning cycle, for both staff and buildings, is much longer than the average Parliament and what a government can plan to be in power for.
Possibly, but they only got the powers to decide how much to spend on health last October Goldie, and immediately chucked more in. Before then it was part of the block grant from Westminster (presumably haas gone up the same as the English health budget) which they can now add to with tax raising powers. Not really a good control.
A large part of the problem in Wales, as in England, is efficiency. I agree with you about a cross-party approach, Stan. So many things fall under the NHS now that were never envisaged when it was set up. Gender reassignments, obesity problems, dental work for kids who have lived their young lives eating chocolate and candy at every meal. Hospitals have the powers to charge for health tourism, but there seems to be a reluctance to use them. Huge sums are lost on missed appointments. Until the holes are fixed in the HHS bucket, voters will be reluctant to pour more money in.
The only way to get an appointment with my GP is to wait outside the surgery on the day. I did it this morning. The surgery opens at 8am, but the phone lines for appointments open at 830am and there is virtually no chance of getting through till any spare slots are gone. I went in at 8am and was given a number. There were 5 in front of me and I started queuing at 745am. Then at 830am they start to call the numbers in sequence and hoover up the remaining slots that are also going over the phone. This is OK as long as you are prepared to queue up early. I've nearly always managed to see my GP this way and I can check online when he's there. The only way to get an appointment in advance is to book it at least 3 weeks beforehand. Obviously this rules out everything other than an ongoing medical problem and follow ups. It sort of works, but is obviously far from ideal. I presume the practice is very over prescribed. On the wider issue, I believe that nothing will change in the NHS till we can have a grown up conversation about it. By this I mean that, when someone mentions private health care working alongside the NHS, those on the left don't start screaming about the Tories wanting to kill the NHS! Similarly I believe that free at the point of delivery for those who can't pay is paramount. Cross party cooperation is the only way forward imo. Labour seem unwilling to even discuss anything other than simply ploughing more money in. The Tories don't seem to care enough. TBH I don't see things improving in my lifetime (and I've seen far too much of the NHS in recent times!!).
All of you agree that a cross-party approach is called for, and a group of 90 MPs - including 33 Tories - wrote to Theresa May in November suggesting just that, but she rejected it out of hand.
Was there no tax avoiding slippery ****ers during the Blair years or is it a new phenomenon only operable during Tory years
Pound trades over 1.43 on both the weakeness of the dollar and the Dutch/Spanish meeting. Stock market taking a bit of a hit in response to sterlings strength.
There was, but it was all anti-establishment and ‘giving it to the man’ then. I expect every labour supporting sparky, brickie and chippy has done many a ‘cash in hand’ job to avoid both VAT and income tax in their time, but that’s OK, innit?
It’s quite interesting. £ also up a little bit against the €. You are probably in a better position to judge, but I was hearing that the generally strengthening global economy and positive outlook for the near future is at odds with the still austerity driven fiscal policies of most governments, especially low interest rates, and these will have to change soon. And when that happens the stock markets will take a hit. I don’t really get this, seems counter intuitive, why would share prices decline if economies are getting stronger and fiscal policy is adjusted to support this? but I’m probably making the easy mistake of thinking that markets are rational and guided rather than random and mindless. Bigger, or at least lots of other, stuff than Brexit going on.
This is once again positive news. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: "As soon as the UK is ready we will be prepared to negotiate an attractive trade deal," he told the BBC in Davos. https://news.sky.com/story/uk-front...rade-deal-says-us-treasury-secretary-11221781 Phillip Hammond told Bloomberg TV "The UK financial services sector is larger than the rest of the Europeans unions put together so we have some negotiating weight in these discussions."
