Current Affairs 2023

[barney]

A week today we will be wandering the narrow streets of Valletta with our shorts on.
Currently around 28c

[paultheagle]

Anyone looking forward to getting the HS2 to Manchester?
Hard luck .

[Ray B]

A few days warmth in what is normally a colder month has to be a bonus whatever it does in Santorini the following week... time to get your shorts out Ray

I haven't put them away yet, loverly weather still here in the east.

[Ray B]

Anyone looking forward to getting the HS2 to Manchester?
Hard luck .

Doesn't mean a thing here in the sticky out bit of the East, of more interest is the money we hope that will finance some urgently needed roads that the government have for years been dragging their heals over..

[paultheagle]

Your right Ray. Has anyone asked the Leveling Up minister, for some new roads, he's Mr Gove apparently he'll help.

[Onelife]

A week today we will be wandering the narrow streets of Valletta with our shorts on.
Currently around 28c

It sounds like a case of shorts, suntan lotion and insect repellent…Enjoy!

[towny44]

Anyone looking forward to getting the HS2 to Manchester?
Hard luck .

I always thought it was a vanity project that wasn't really needed, and that increasing capacity could probaly be done much cheaper with improvements to existing track, which would benefit all rail users.

[david63]

I wonder if the industrial action by the train drivers has had any influence on this decision? If people are moving away from using trains then that is another reason why we do not need HS2

[Onelife]

The one thing that is probably true is that if HS2 had started from Manchester and not London Rishi wouldn’t have pulled the plug.

[screwy]

Rishi was right about one thing.

There’s Men and there’s Women,that’s it.!

Saw a clip of Piers Morgan in a debate with a couple of pro trans women who said that you can identify with whatever you want to be. Piers said OK, I’m a black lesbian,they scoffed.

[david63]

So we now know some of Labour's plans if they win the next general election.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67043218

They are going to tax non-doms to fund 40,000 out of hours appointments in the NHS each week. Now correct me if I am wrong here but isn't this about the 10th thing that they are using the non-dom tax for? Now I don't suppose for one minute that any non-doms will leave the country taking their investments and businesses with them thus reducing taxation in other areas.

These "new" appointments are to pay NHS staff overtime to work evenings and weekends - hold on a minute we are already paying them overtime for working evenings and weekends to keep the NHS going - and what about burn out in these staff? I would actually be looking at reducing the number of hours that NHS staff can work - after all it is illegal for a HGV driver to work that many hours and both occupations have people's lives in their hands.

Then the next brilliant idea is to spend £171 million on doubling the number of CT scanners in the NHS (a quick Google search would indicate that a new CT scanner starts at around £500,000!) and where is he going to put all of these scanners? Has he ever seen a CT scanner? My experience is that they take up a very large room - and what about staff to operate them and interpret the images?

All of this sounds good - let's tax people who are not paying tax and give it to the poor NHS.

I would be more impressed if not only Labour but all political parties would come up with a plan as to how they intend to fund the NHS going forward because everyone knows that the current system is unsustainable - oh yes I forgot it would mean that everyone would have to pay more and that does not win votes.

[Onelife]

I wouldn’t disagree with anything you have written in your post, but as always it boils down to what is a workable solution? We can all jump in at any level and say how things might be improved but at the end of the day plugging holes only last so long before they need a proper fix and the only way I can see this happening is by making the profession more desirable, better wages, better working hours/conditions, subsidised accommodation for students and recognition that this profession above all is worth paying more in tax for.

[paultheagle]

At least Labour have got a policy. I have no idea whether it will work or not we will have to wait and see. I do know that it's definitely a step up from the government whose only policy is ignore the problems in the NHS and hopefully they will go away.

[Ray B]

He has looked into his bag of carrots and there will be only a few to go round.
If he takes over, by that time he will find that some are to small and the promises made will have to be cut. Nothing changes

[towny44]

At least Labour have got a policy. I have no idea whether it will work or not we will have to wait and see. I do know that it's definitely a step up from the government whose only policy is ignore the problems in the NHS and hopefully they will go away.

I agree Paul, but they always have had a policy which few right thinking people could disagree with. Unfortunately their track record at successfully implementing their policies without wrecking the economy have generally failed.
Personally I just don't see Sir Keir as a dynamic PM, he lacks charisma and I worry that he will far too easily give in to the far left voices in his cabinet and resort to the usual spend, spend, spend policies of the past.

[paultheagle]

Same old Labour, I hope not, surely Starmer has learned lessons from the past and won't make the same mistakes again. I don't think we should judge him by his personality but by results. Johnson had charisma.
All I can say for certain is Labour, if they win the General Election, cannot make a mess if things like the Tories have done.
Things can only get better

[towny44]

Same old Labour, I hope not, surely Starmer has learned lessons from the past and won't make the same mistakes again. I don't think we should judge him by his personality but by results. Johnson had charisma.
All I can say for certain is Labour, if they win the General Election, cannot make a mess if things like the Tories have done.
Things can only get better

I do hope you're right, but my experience over many years tells me otherwise.

[Stephen]

They’re all the same, tell you what you want to hear to get a foot in the door.

[david63]

They’re all the same, tell you what you want to hear to get a foot in the door.

Sadly that is true

[towny44]

...........

[Mervyn and Trish]

And even if they get all these new scanners, and places to house them, and staff to operate them, all that will do is diagnose more people and add them to the queue for treatment. It doesn't cure more people. It just kicks the ball down the road. We need to fix the whole system, not just part of it.

[CaroleF]

Throwing money at the NHS has never worked and it won't work now. Until it's Doctors and Nurses who organize things it's never going to change. It used to work when there was a Medical Superintendent, a doctor, and a Matron, a nurse. If the sisters I worked under at Barts in the 1960s went round a ward today, yes they would be amazed by all the equipment, all the treatments that are available, but they would be horrified at the standard of nursing in the wards, not in the theatres or intensive care, that's wonderful as it has always been, but in the general wards. They would see patients not being fed, patients with bedsores, Sisters and Charge Nurses who don't know all their patients. I have asked the Charge Nurse in a large city hospital if my husband was able to eat anything that day - the response, 'I don't know.' I have seen my husband prescribed medication that if the doctor had read his notes, would have seen that he was allergic to one of the ingredients. It isn't the fault of the doctors and nurses, it's the way things are organised by people who have no knowledge of how things need to work. As Mervyn says, it's the whole system that needs to be sorted.

[towny44]

The problem is, how much is it going to cost to provide a health service that we would all like to have? I am afraid the answer is going to be far more than the country can afford.
So how do we square that circle?

[david63]

is diagnose more people and add them to the queue for treatment

But don't forget that there will be another 40k appointments a week to treat these new diagnosed patients

Sisters and Charge Nurses who don't know all their patients

When I was in hospital a couple of years ago I was on the ward for 12 days and the only time the ward sister spoke to me was as I was being discharged to ask about my stitches being taken out (they were the self dissoluble ones!!)

how much is it going to cost to provide a health service that we would all like to have?

I doubt anyone knows - which is all part of the problem - but it will be a lot more than is being spent know.

the answer is going to be far more than the country can afford.

This is what I have been saying for a long time - the country has to decide if it want an "all singing, all dancing state of the art" NHS and if so how it is going to pay for it, or does the country want an NHS at a budget price which means reducing the services to be what we are willing to pay. At the moment the NHS is trying to be all things to all people but at budget rates.

[Onelife]

As always actions speak louder than words but if Kier Starmer can delivery half of what he promises then that has to be better than sticking with a conservative party which has more camps than a scout jamboree.

I don’t particular like some who will be sitting around his cabinet table (Angela Raynor, Wes, etc) but there isn’t any future in a conservative party which can’t rub two sticks together.

Light the fire and vote Green…get rid of our freeloader hereditary system.