Current Affairs

[screwy]

We’ll said David, bloody foreigners.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Pardonnez moi.

Je blame le Channel Tunnel. Et Brexit. Et Gordon Brown.

[Kendhni]

It has been reported that the National Grid has had to issue an emergency appeal to Belgium to provide power to its network with us having to pay over £9700 per MWh at one point. That is during the summer ... does not bode well for the winter. The new PM must put together a proper plan to handle the energy crisis immediately.

[Mervyn and Trish]

And there was the green lobby telling us how wonderful the wind turbines are! I accept we need to move to renewable. But to me it is ludicrous the close down existing power stations before new sources are in place. All parties guilty. And don't get me started on charging up electric cars if we are tight on supplies to keep the lights on.

[Ray B]

They have been dragging their heals on nuclear power stations. Hydro and nuclear are the only power source we can call on for quick response. A day of no wind and no sun, supplies no power.

[towny44]

It has been reported that the National Grid has had to issue an emergency appeal to Belgium to provide power to its network with us having to pay over £9700 per MWh at one point. That is during the summer ... does not bode well for the winter. The new PM must put together a proper plan to handle the energy crisis immediately.

That seems to contradict recent reports of record levels of UK exports to the continent, mainly France as reported this last weekend.
Google report.
The UK has been exporting record levels of energy to Europe after ships delivered vast quantities of liquid gas to British ports from around the world. Both gas and electricity exports to the continent have surged in recent months as prices in Europe climb above those in the UK.18 May 2022

[Kendhni]

If I recall correctly the UK over purchased gas in May and had storage capacity issues so it made sense to fire it out to other countries (and make a bit of profit in the deal as well) .. why that didn't result in a lowering of the price probably implies it was a short term issue. Given todays news though it appears 2 months has made a big difference. If you have access to the Torygraph (but available on other channels)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... ep-lights/

[Mervyn and Trish]

Critical report on the health service this morning, highlighting staff shortages. By a committee chaired by Jeremy Hunt.

Of course building a health workforce takes time. Typical lead time for a junior doctor 5 to 7 years. For a nurse 4 to 5 years. For a consultant 10 years at least.

So planning to avert the current crisis should have begun somewhere between 2012 and 2018.

So let me think who was health secretary then?

That would be...... Jeremy Hunt.

[Onelife]

One of the biggest mistakes the NHS made, especially in regard to staff shortages, is due to the scrapping of subsidised on-site staff accommodation, this started around 2010/12 and did/has had a big impact on recruitment for both Nurses and Doctors… so my wife tells me.

[Ranchi]

Have I got this right? We have a dual fuel account and pay by direct debit. Our account is in credit by quite a bit ( which I am assured is normal at this time of year.) That means we have paid our money to the energy company when energy cost £X per kW and they will then keep most our money and use it to sell ‘energy’ to us at £X+y per kW (where y is +ve following the October price rise.) To be honest, I would much rather they had ring fenced ‘our energy’ when they took our money ( we would have happily paid a small fee for them to store the gas in the town’s gasometer or for the electricity to do a few turns of the Cruachan hydro plant.
Doesn’t seem fair to me. Or perhaps you think it’s karma for Mrs R stocking up in 1st class postage stamps.I

[david63]

I read that news item as well and the first question I would ask is how accurate are those shortages of 12,000 doctors and 50,000 nurses, or are they just numbers plucked out of space?

There is no doubt that there is a shortage and much of that shortage is, I believe, due to NHS staff leaving due to the working conditions and protocols that various Governments have put in place - the main one being the NHS being target driven rather than patient driven.

Whilst we have a shortage of doctors and nurses in the NHS do we actually have a shortage in the country? How many of the doctors and nurses that have left the NHS have moved over to be agency staff doing the same job but being paid more for doing it together with less responsibility/pressure?

It is all well and good saying that we have these staff shortages but if by some miracle they fell from the skies tomorrow would we actually have the infrastructure/facilities to accommodate them?

[Kendhni]

Have I got this right? We have a dual fuel account and pay by direct debit. Our account is in credit by quite a bit ( which I am assured is normal at this time of year.) That means we have paid our money to the energy company when energy cost £X per kW and they will then keep most our money and use it to sell ‘energy’ to us at £X+y per kW (where y is +ve following the October price rise.) To be honest, I would much rather they had ring fenced ‘our energy’ when they took our money ( we would have happily paid a small fee for them to store the gas in the town’s gasometer or for the electricity to do a few turns of the Cruachan hydro plant.
Doesn’t seem fair to me. Or perhaps you think it’s karma for Mrs R stocking up in 1st class postage stamps.I

Not a million miles off! Unless of course you have a pre-payment meter and took the opportunity to preload it. Apparently, as long as you don't put the card anywhere near the meter then it will run down the number of units at the old, cheaper price. I have heard stories of people pre-loading hundreds of pounds on them (someone mentioned there is a max of about £1800).

[Kendhni]

I read that news item as well and the first question I would ask is how accurate are those shortages of 12,000 and 50,000 nurses, or are they just numbers plucked out of space?

There is no doubt that there is a shortage and much of that shortage is, I believe, due to NHS staff leaving due to the working conditions and protocols that various Governments have put in place - the main one being the NHS being target driven rather than patient driven.

Whilst we have a shortage of doctors and nurses in the NHS do we actually have a shortage in the country? How many of the doctors and nurses that have left the NHS have moved over to be agency staff doing the same job but being paid for for doing it together with less responsibility/pressure?

It is all well and good saying that we have these staff shortages but if by some miracle the fell from the skies tomorrow would we actually have the infrastructure/facilities to accommodate them?

That was my line of thinking as well. Every year, twice a year, for as long as I can remember, the NHS has been complaining there is not enough staff and not enough money. Even when billions more are poured into it then within 6 months we go back to cries of not enough staff, not enough money.

At the minute, multiple factors have caused thousands to exodus from the NHS over the last few years, so I don't think it is crying wolf this time and I have anecdotally heard many stories that recruiters just cannot get enough skilled staff to take available jobs. As you say, plenty of high cost agency staff available, but that just does even more harm to the NHS budget.

[david63]

plenty of high cost agency staff available, but that just does even more harm to the NHS budget.

But that is of the NHS's own making. Just say to the agencies that we will only pay the going rate for a nurse/doctor and no more. As I understand it many of the agency staff need the work and have only become agency staff for the money.

[Mervyn and Trish]

There's always a turnover in NHS staff, through retirement if nothing else. And there may well be other factors too, especially over the last couple of years. But against that the medical schools always have many more applications than they have funded places for. The medium to long term solution is to increase the number of training places, the exact opposite of what successive governments have done for many years. The short term is more difficult but that shouldn't be a barrier to doing the long term work force planning now.

I've often said, as I firmly believe, that the opposing political parties should set up a joint body to establish a 30 year health strategy that they all sign up to. But they won't do it because health is a great vote winner and loser.

Every time a government, or even minister, changes they move the goal posts and set up a new layer of bureaucracy without dismantling the old one.

In the last 25 years here we've gone from a single district health authority directly running hospitals, ambulance service and primary care to bodies that change every five minutes buying and selling to each other.

We've had District Health Authority, Regional Health Authority, Strategic Health Authority, GP Fundholders, PCGs, PCTs, CCGs (and something else new last month), District Hospitals, Hospital Trusts, Foundation Hospital Trusts, merged Hospital Trusts, Walk-in Centres, Ambulance Trusts, NHS Direct, NHS 111. It's never ending.

[Manoverboard]

Where are the nurses that were going to arrive from Indonesia etc ?

[Mervyn and Trish]

That's been one of the past problems in my view. We've for a very long time assumed we can top up our staff from abroad, and not just within the EU. I've never thought it was ethical as a first world country to take advantage of less developed nations to top up our own training deficiency. Though I appreciate for many of the individuals it is a personal opportunity to earn far more than they could at home.

[david63]

Where are the nurses that were going to arrive from Indonesia etc ?

Probably still in Indonesia!

Personally I do not agree with "recruiting" medical staff from other countries on two counts:

1. Taking medical staff from another country must, by definition, reduce the number of staff in that country meaning that all we are doing is moving the problem around the world. I don't particularly mind if they want to come or if a country has a surfeit of medical staff - which I suspect is unlikely.

2. A large number of medical staff from other countries have either poor English or heavy accents which makes understanding them somewhat difficult at the best of times and when you are in the stressful situation of being in hospital it is even worse.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I agree on both points.

Curiously on the second particularly, and on the issue of qualifications, under the good old EU we were not allowed to make the same language and qualifications checks on EU nationals as we were on those from other countries. If they met their home country standards we had to accept them. The result has been a number of Europe related disasters, including deaths, referred to professional bodies over the years. One of the Brexit benefits is we can now apply the same scrutiny to all overseas applicants. But it's still not as ideal as home growing them (from a wide range of resident ethnic backgrounds).

[Kendhni]

That's been one of the past problems in my view. We've for a very long time assumed we can top up our staff from abroad, and not just within the EU. I've never thought it was ethical as a first world country to take advantage of less developed nations to top up our own training deficiency. Though I appreciate for many of the individuals it is a personal opportunity to earn far more than they could at home.

There is the other side to that coin as well. Some countries cannot afford to train the required number of medical staff so they incentivise them to study and train overseas. We carry out the education/training, get a few years back as junior doctors/nurses, as they learn the skills, and then many head back home. It can be a symbiotic relationship.

[Ray B]

On a light hearted note, over the last weekend the inaugural Scottish Tree Hugging Championships were held. We do not want to many of those crossing the border south, as we have enough down here holding up improvements to infrastructure like new roads etc.

[david63]

Some countries cannot afford to train the required number of medical staff so they incentivise them to study and train overseas. We carry out the education/training

And therein lies another problem. I believe that from the universities perspective it is more profitable to take a foreign student than it is a British one - thus depriving potential students the ability to train.

[Manoverboard]

It is not correct to imply that they donna speaks de lingo, we simply select the ones with good English language skills. In the Philippines, for example, they train more nurses than they need so that they can travel overseas to widen their experience base, there is not a local shortage as a consequence. These guys are very happy to be nurses rather than would be Doctors or Admin staff within a Trust as seems to be the case with the regular UK NHS staff. We therefore need two levels of nurse, one as a career nurse and another who does it in order to gain promotion to someplace else.

I don't have a problem with it and have been cared for by Asian Nationals in Private Hospitals which demonstrates to me their ability to reach a very high standard.

[Happydays]

We used to have two levels of nurses SEN & SRN

[Mervyn and Trish]

The names have changed but I think we still do. Plus HCAs.