Who is striking? How Thursday 15 December’s walkouts will affect you
Christmas may be very close but when it comes to strikes good tidings are in short supply.
On Thursday nurses will walk out in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The advice is this: if you haven't heard your appointment is cancelled, assume it's going ahead. There's no need to call your local hospital to check.
Meanwhile our Tesco delivery driver will arrive later today as they always do unless something actually breaks down. In spite of the cold weather, he'll be cheerful and chatty too, because they always are.
Oh - and yesterday I contacted a local locksmith because the lock on our back door had given up working. I told him it wasn't an emergency, but later that afternoon he had an hour spare so he came and fixed the lock in freezing conditions just before nightfall. For him it was another earner before Christmas and for us a fixed lock. Incentives on both sides.
16 comments:
All that reverance for the NHS during lockdown, but it was the private sector that came through. At least the ones that were allowed to open. I'm sure the others would have if the Government hadn't shut them down
The NHS shut down voluntarily and took up residence on Tik Tok, where they may has well have remained, for all the good they've done since
I'm happy to say that walkouts and strikes in the NHS will not affect me at all. They bombarded me with multiple letters telling me how important it was to attend my appointment for a scan, then gave me a diagnosis on the basis of that scan, then told me they would be arranging treatment. Since then, (17 months ago) they have not contacted me, despite me trying to phone them and get around the hospital's cleverly-designed telephone bamboozler system that sends you back to the main switchboard in another town. Nor have they responded to my GP phoning them.
So stay on strike as long as you need to, guys, and my taxes will support you whether you treat me or not. I'm happy to help!
"For him it was another earner before Christmas and for us a fixed lock. Incentives on both sides."
And therein lies the nub of the failure of the NHS and socialism in general. Incentives matter. People are selfish, and want whats best for them at the lowest cost in effort and money. Free markets harness that selfishness and creates a win/win situation for both sides. Socialism puts everyone's selfishness at odds, with the result of misery on at least one side of the transaction, usually the one with the least power.
Humans are so mind bogglingly stupid that over 100 years of practical examples of socialism failing in action have yet to convince them of the utter bankruptcy of the concept.
Now been waiting for 2 years for an investigation at the local hospital, like Sam , our doctor can't even get an answer. Some years pre covid the wife needed a minor op, after 2 years of discomfort even back then non replies from the hospital to us or the doctor. We scraped together the cash to go private - sorted by a day procedure in under a month! As you note AK, during all this time private companies and local trades people have provided excellent service. Anything governemnt run has been a shambles.
I'd suggest that people who elect to use private services (health care, education, residential care) should pay a reduced NI or receive a larger tax allowance.
This would enable people to vote with their feet and maybe, just maybe, provide competition to the 'one size fits all' services.
I acknowledge that there are (possibly a majority) of good NHS nurses and doctors - I'd be happier about a big pay rise if the poorly performing nurses, doctors and administrators got the boot. The NHS deadwood is dragging everybody down.
Not sure who’s the baddy here? Is it the NHS making nurses do things they should not … or is it just them wanting more money?
Bucko - yes, private sector workers are those we should have clapped. Particularly those who had contact with the public but just got on with the job.
Sam - blimey 17 months is absurd, but I wonder how many similar stories there are? Merely by extrapolating from people we know, the number must be vast.
Sobers - it seems to be the case that easy answers have an enormous advantage over any kind of factual analysis. Unless the disasters of socialism have a major personal impact, most people seem determined to be unaware of them.
Woodsy - 2 years is ludicrous, but these stories are so common aren't they? Someone we know is having great difficulty finding an NHS dentist after her dentist for 40 years finally retired. We had no problems when ours retired, but we go to a private dentist.
DJ - and it would be no surprise at all if all the other staff could point to the dead wood, but nothing is likely to be done about it. This problem seems to be fundamental and incurable.
James - it's the whole sorry business as far as I can see. Effectively having its own political party doesn't help.
We've long paid for some "private medicine" - dentistry, osteopathy, some physio - but not for anything else.
In December 2019, however, we decided to pay for an operation at the beginning of January 2020. Both good judgement and good luck there.
Apart from the Covid wards and presumably the maternity hospitals, the nurses and the rest of the NHS just abandoned their patients for months at a time. I was offered NHS physio by phone. Very satirical.
@DiscoveredJoys - I once had that conversation with a lefty who thought the NHS was the dogs bollocks. He was adamant that there should be no opt out option, or any reduction in taxes for using private. His reasons were that too many people maight take it up.
No matter how I tried, I couldn't get him to see the illogic in that
We've clearly been thinking along the same lines today; reading the news, I was reminded of a local chemist who was far more supportive and helpful than the GP’s surgery when a family member was seriously ill.
She happens to be a kind and thoughtful person, but, to look at the matter entirely objectively, she also had a vested interest In keeping the long-term sick alive as long as possible while, to the surgery, they represented a substantial and disproportionate workload in exchange for the £100-odd per capita flat-rate government funding.
Some monies should be put aside to strengthen and reinforce the hospital floors - pay some of the already-large nurses more and they'll just get bigger and heavier, endangering the whole team...
dearieme - we pay for private dentistry and have paid for a few sessions of osteopathy, but that's it. We'd pay for a private operation if one seemed necessary and I can see more people doing that over time.
Bucko - there is a touch of the jackboot in many people, but they hardly ever see it like that.
Macheath - yes, that vested interest seems to be what the NHS lacks. A cynic could suggest that it has a vested interest in people being either healthy or dead with no intermediate state.
Ed - and those desks they lean on while chatting, they need reinforcement too.
Admitted to my local hospital, being suddenly paralysed from the waist down. Very quickly diagnosed with Guillen Barre Syndrome and, after a lumbar puncture, treated with transfusions of protein into my spine. One thing that was interesting, was that I was asked if I had had a Pfizer covid booster (I had, some months earlier), but no one asked about the 2 Astra Zenica vaccinations I had had before.
Now an eminent neurologist, supported by MP Andrew Bridgen, has linked the Pfizer vaccine with GPS.
Now recovering, and hope to quickly stop using the crutches, have been told I'm eligible for my next (Pfizer) booster. So far, have ignored the messages.
Penseivat
Penseivat - that sounds grim, I hope you recover soon and get rid of those crutches. Vaccine damage seems have the potential to be an emerging scandal, assuming it ever does emerge. The people who appear to see it are specialists, as in your case, asking their patients about their vaccine status.
The Royal Mail strikes looked ridiculous when all the private delivery companies continued to belt around the coyntryside, fulfilling their orders!
I doubt many Christmas boxes will be doled out to the strikers...
Scrobs - the parcel delivery side could go down the tubes and quite a few people who have had delivery problems may say good riddance.
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