When leaders don't

[JohnD]

Merci, RR!    I didn't knioe that France has a similar problem, as the French equivalent of the BMA warned seven years ago!  Doctor Shortage in France? | French-Property.com    And that's despite French doctors being better paid (Average: UK £76K : France Euros 116K (£103K))

We have a similar problems for dental cover, 2000 left the NHS last year and with some parts of the country being "Dental deserts" as there are NO dentists.     The fees that they can charge for NHS care are so low they can't afford to run a surgery. 

John

[RedRooster]

After covid and the lock downs a lot of people in various trades just took early retirement. Plenty of restaurants and cafe bars closed and have been converted to houses, they will never be converted back. 

[Nick Jones]

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/28/government-defends-public-funds-boris-johnson-partygate-legal-advice

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/26/boris-johnson-may-get-more-taxpayers-money-for-partygate-defence

This really pisses me off. Taxpayer money (including mine) being squandered on defending the indefensible and the Blobs worthless hide. What’s more he’s off on the after dinner circuit (though why people pay to hear his drivelling…. Defeats me), ignoring his constituents, and pulling down ridiculous sums that would more than pay for his “defence expenses”. This is a very sick country….

[BiTurbo228]

On 1/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, zetecspit said:

Back to today. I see the govt is sticking some funding in to move bedblockers out of hospitals. Amazing it has taken this long to see that is the way forward in easing NHS issues. Tjhere is soem more money for some sort of upgrades, it sounded like for turning areas for ambulances or such stuff. I wasn't aware that was an issue, but with queues maybe it is. 

And the nurses pay. Seems some progress is happening. But I am a tad confused about the pay award for this year. Is that the pay starting in April 2023 or whenever the annual rise happens? Or are the nurses expecting a backdated pay rise? I guess if backdated, that has an affect on the next pay rise in terms of %. But none of it is clear in my muddled little brain. 

I just hope it all gets sorted out. And I expect it will be less a case that everybody will be happy, more that everybody is equally disappointed but knows it is the best either side can achieve. 

Just to weigh in from someone who works in NHS commissioning (children's mental health so not exactly A&E, but you hear a lot of chatter).

On the pay front, there isn't an annual payrise factored into NHS wages. However, you're right that 1st April each year is when pay negotiations work from. They may be asking for some backdating, but I'm not sure myself. If a pay award is made mid-year, it's typically backdated for the rest of the financial year (or at least it has been on the 3 occasions it's actually happened in my 12 year NHS career).

I'd be very wary of any money badged as 'new' for the NHS. It does happen certainly, but the lot in charge have a habit of double-counting what's 'new' or not.

The causes of the challenge with discharging from hospitals is well known in the NHS. The gutting of the elderly social care sector, a botched attempt to encourage the private sector to take up the slack, a strong push to save costs by reducing bedstock has finally come home to roost. Add onto that the fact that the health and care sector relied significantly on immigrant labour until this current lot ballsed that up, and chronic issues recruiting due to the degradation of pay and conditions, and you get a perfect storm of patients waiting hours and hours in the back of ambulances because the whole system has ground to a halt.

The solution is clear, it's just politically unpalatable to the folks in charge.

[Nick Jones]

When you thought he couldn’t go any lower….. de Piffle want to include his deeply unworthy father in his resignation honours list. Personally I don’t feel he or the Truss should able to bestow any honours at all due to clearly faulty morals and judgement….

but seems this may be the best we can do

https://chng.it/hLxSYBkj4s

[JohnD]

Nominating his dad is probably a straw horse(?), a false target ?? for the committee that ratifies such lists to strike down.   There are many more there who are I a better position to return the favour, such as FOUR sitting MPs!

No doubt he would like there to be some choice Blue Wall seats available if his own disowns him!

John

[Nick Jones]

Agreed. I thought nominating sitting MPs was forbidden, but I guess it’s just another example of convention assuming that the nominator will behave properly. This one definitely does not.

[Nick Jones]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/mar/09/undercover-ambulance-nhs-in-chaos-review-a-lethal-lottery-seen-through-horrified-eyes
 

Just watched it…… very nasty, but meshes with our experiences last year 

I blame the “government”, successive governments from 2010….

[BiTurbo228]

On 3/9/2023 at 11:15 PM, Nick Jones said:

I blame the “government”, successive governments from 2010….

So do I!

[Escadrille Ecosse]

Nice to see the support for Mr Linnekar.

Interesting to see how this pans out on the back of the Richard Sharp nepostism

[Nick Jones]

Fairly spectacular own-goal for the government-appeasing toadies in BBC senior management.

Does seem to be rather a lot of “4 legs good 2” legs bad type thinking.

It has been frustrating me for some years now that BBC “impartially” has mainly seemed to mean giving excessive airtime to the right wing lunatic fringe.  This only makes it more obvious.

[JohnD]

In the interests of balance (a BBC mantra?) the guidelines of the BBC state: 

The key principle in the guidance is that “anyone working for the BBC is a representative of the organisation, both offline and also when online, including on social media; the same standards apply to the behaviour and conduct of staff in both circumstances”. (Fuller account at https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2023/mar/12/what-is-the-bbcs-social-media-policy-and-what-does-it-mean-for-stars-like-lineker

That assumes an enormous committment by such people.  There's no doubt that Lineker was "working" for the BBC, but if he could be said to have accepted that committment is doubtful.  If the BBC want to loose their highest paid presenter, who may feel best working at the BBC, they are doing the right thing.  He could probably have got more working for many other other channels.

[zetecspit]

This is a classic cock up. Like so much in life, if GLs tweet had not been mentioned and a huge fuss stirred up by whoever pressed the "go nuclear" button it would have been situation normal. Now the BBC is having to decide if it is willing to back down or going to sack GL. He certainly isn't too worried nor prepared to change, which I applaud. I like and respect  honesty and backbone in people whether or not their views are the same as mine. Some people are badly misguided (or I think so) but here we have somebody who has credentials to support his views. 

[RogerH]

Sadly the reaction from the home sec has become the norm over the last few year.

GL tweeted one thing

Home Sec - took the tweet shredded  and then re-assembled it and then attacked GL with utter rubbish.

She feels GL likened her to Hitler etc     I read it that GL likened it to the 1930's Nazi philosophy

Remember if you are badly done by - then attack the accuser with something worse.

Roger

[Escadrille Ecosse]

@JohnD Lineker is not a BBC employee.  He is a company employed by the BBC to provide pundit services.

In that respect he is expected to express opinions.

Like he did over the human rights situation during the Quatar football or the taking the knee thing that went on.

Or like his comments on the poisonings of girls in Iran. No-one in the BBC or government complained about those.

It was only his comment about dealing with migrants humanely (it was no more than that) that upset Braverman and her cronies who turned the thing round into an ad-hominem attack on GL and presumably got their gimp in charge at the BBC to pull strings.

Presumably no-one is reading this as they turn up for work at the BBC 

@Nick Jones right and left complain endlessly about the BBC. Which is probably a good sign. Just need some people up the tree with a bit of backbone. 

[JohnD]

No argument with your points, Colin!   It appears that the BBC has had a sudden rush of good sense or else, aghast at the solid wall of fellow pundits withdrawing their services in support of the Lineker, has reinstated him, while it "reviews its social media guidelines".     I suspect the intention is a long pass up the side line and into the long grass.

John

[Nick Jones]

9 hours ago, Escadrille Ecosse said:

right and left complain endlessly about the BBC. Which is probably a good sign. Just need some people up the tree with a bit of backbone. 

Well yeah, over the years things may even out, but just now the right seem to have undue influence. 
 

Though typically for the bunch of baboons currently in charge, there is such an absence of subtlety or self awareness that they have (hopefully) shot their own fox.

[Nick Jones]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/18/braverman-criticised-for-shutting-out-guardian-and-bbc-from-rwanda-trip
 

Not the actions of an honest government or one with any serious belief in democracy. And it’s ours! 

There is a quotation (which cannot find) that basically says beware of a government that mistreats foreigners as they are not far off mistreatment of their own…. Though in this case we are already long since there. Wind rush…. Stripping citizenship from those who made bad choices as children…. Deportation by stealth…… (we’ll let you out for your holiday, but don’t imagine we’ll let you in again, even if you’ve lived here all your life!)

Far too much “dictators playbook” stuff for a supposedly civilised country. Shameful. Not least because it’s all engineered to appeal to a small sector of their target electorate while simultaneously distracting from more dirty doings nearer home.

[JohnD]

"The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it."??

Tony Benn, allegedly, but he may have nicked it from  the Scottish journalist and writer Neal Ascherson.

 

[Nick Jones]

Yeah, that’s close enough.

 

This, from Roosevelt, seems apposite

You fought for real brotherhood, for the real rights of man. You fought to establish here the rule of liberty under, by and through the law. You established once for all that the worst enemy of this country is the man who tries to excite section against section, creed against creed, or class against class. This government is not and never shall be a government either of a plutocracy or of a mob.

Unfortunately, our government is one of plutocracy and like to raise mob by inciting division at every opportunity.  Nasty bastards.

[Nick Jones]

Dare we hope that the Boil is about to be finally lanced, the unflushable, flushed?

This quote from Will Walden today struck a chord: “A man with an elastic relationship with the truth, swearing on a Bible to tell the truth about whether in the past he told the truth or not – I mean you literally couldn’t make it up.”

Quite.

[rog1]

39 minutes ago, Nick Jones said:

Dare we hope that the Boil is about to be finally lanced, the unflushable, flushed?

This quote from Will Walden today struck a chord: “A man with an elastic relationship with the truth, swearing on a Bible to tell the truth about whether in the past he told the truth or not – I mean you literally couldn’t make it up.”

Quite.

and a defence/denial more like! paid for by the public purse! FFS!!!

[Escadrille Ecosse]

We shall see

[Nick Jones]

5 minutes ago, rog1 said:

and a defence/denial more like! paid for by the public purse! FFS!!!

Quite! I’ve ranted about that before.  Does rile me considerably.

[JohnD]

His  entourage are saying that he will reject any adverse verdict by the Privileges Committee ( and presumably accept as his right a 'not guilty' )     How most Trumpian!