Here is a link to a Daily Telegraph article.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/0 … mic-three/
As you may see it is behind a pay wall, but there is this too
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gt6f
Skip to 08-15 to get to the relevant bit.
Very damning, however well the government ultimately manages to deal with this epidemic it will finish them. This will be a repeat of Churchill’s post WW2 election. They can wriggle, squirm and lie but the electorate just won’t believe them. As he leaves the stage we have already seen Corbyn saying that they had been told repeatedly by him about the lack of funding. Whatever we may think of him, the man is right. This won’t go away.
Franglais with reference to our discussion about NHS managers take a look at the Lancet an article in there written by a doctor at the end of Jan saying that managers should have been gearing up for this then but didn’t and that is another reason why the NHS is so unprepared.
Mazzer2:
Franglais with reference to our discussion about NHS managers take a look at the Lancet an article in there written by a doctor at the end of Jan saying that managers should have been gearing up for this then but didn’t and that is another reason why the NHS is so unprepared.
This past winter, although a mild one had this:
news.sky.com/story/treating-a-e … m-11943349
rcni.com/nursing-standard/newsr … nhs-156836
A blip? From 2018:
theguardian.com/society/201 … heresa-may
The funding is such that it has become “normal” to have patients treated in corridors…before COVID 19 hit us hard.
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Now with those levels of funding how can managers have geared up?
Did the Minister up their funds so they could achieve this? Are you saying they had enough money?
How can you keep blaming the managers for years of underfunding?
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clinicalservicesjournal.com … -2-billion
"However, Richard Murray, director of policy for The King’s Fund, warned: “It is alarming that NHS providers now forecast a £931 m deficit for this financial year, a deterioration of over £300 m in three months. This reflects the dramatic decline in the finances of a number of individual trusts, and raises serious questions about how reasonable the financial targets were in the first place.
“While NHS Improvement is right to point to increases in demand for services as the reason for the financial difficulties, these are not pressures that have sprung up in the last few months and show no sign of abating. Although the Treasury has provided more money to the Department of Health and Social Care, these pressures raise the risk it will breach its own budget.
“This underlines yet again that after the biggest funding squeeze in NHS history, the service does not have enough money or staff to do everything being asked of it.”
Years of neglect.
You can blame those who are trying to manage and eek out the available monies if you choose, I choose to point at those who deny the necessary funds.
cav551:
Very damning, however well the government ultimately manages to deal with this epidemic it will finish them. This will be a repeat of Churchill’s post WW2 election. They can wriggle, squirm and lie but the electorate just won’t believe them. As he leaves the stage we have already seen Corbyn saying that they had been told repeatedly by him about the lack of funding. Whatever we may think of him, the man is right. This won’t go away.
Successive governments of every colour have been “starving” the NHS of resources since its inception; since even its creators found out very swiftly that it was the ultimate money pit.
That does not make what has happened right, but it should be taken in context with what I said above.
There is absolutely no guarantee that a Labour government, even one headed (heaven forbid) by Corbyn, would have done any more. Tony Blair/Gordon Brown had thirteen years after all.
This comes on top of the GMB reports that 45% of PPE supplied to NHS staff is 5 years out of date, with in some instances evidence that there has been an attempt to conceal the original markings.
In some countries executions would follow for such dereliction of duty.
Sidevalve:
cav551:
Very damning, however well the government ultimately manages to deal with this epidemic it will finish them. This will be a repeat of Churchill’s post WW2 election. They can wriggle, squirm and lie but the electorate just won’t believe them. As he leaves the stage we have already seen Corbyn saying that they had been told repeatedly by him about the lack of funding. Whatever we may think of him, the man is right. This won’t go away.Successive governments of every colour have been “starving” the NHS of resources since its inception; since even its creators found out very swiftly that it was the ultimate money pit.
That does not make what has happened right, but it should be taken in context with what I said above.
There is absolutely no guarantee that a Labour government, even one headed (heaven forbid) by Corbyn, would have done any more. Tony Blair/Gordon Brown had thirteen years after all.
There are different ways of measuring these things.
Looking at the actual amount spent is difficult to take account of inflation.
Looking the expenditure doesn`t always take account of higher demand, partly through higher expectations of better care (nothing wrong with that, surely) and an aging population.
But look at this, the amount spent as a percentage of the GDP. It may give some indication of how much Government values the NHS?
nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/ … -1950-2020
From mid 90s until 2010 wasnt there a definite increase? And a funding fall under the Tories? I dont say that graph says everything, but I do say it shows a lot.
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It isn`t good use of funds to have empty hospitals on stand by in case of an asteroid strike or summat, but we have had years of under funding, and it seems to me some colour Govs have been worse than others.
A report form a Danish Dr for the WHO has said that no health service in the world could have been prepared for this pandemic, on a different note Sweden is using the herd immunity method to control the pandemic, isolating the older population while immunity builds up among the remainder, don’t see them getting criticized for this, perhaps not having Boris as PM is the answer. Until we start to see the end of this we will not know which methods were the best, at the moment the Chinese would have us believe that lockdown works, except there is no way of independently verifying this as the Chinese have lied about this from the start and are not going to let observers in to see if their methods are the right way to go
Mazzer2:
A report form a Danish Dr for the WHO has said that no health service in the world could have been prepared for this pandemic, on a different note Sweden is using the herd immunity method to control the pandemic, isolating the older population while immunity builds up among the remainder, don’t see them getting criticized for this, perhaps not having Boris as PM is the answer. Until we start to see the end of this we will not know which methods were the best, at the moment the Chinese would have us believe that lockdown works, except there is no way of independently verifying this as the Chinese have lied about this from the start and are not going to let observers in to see if their methods are the right way to go
Being fully prepared at all times would be very expensive, true. Having a suitable level of preparedness, against the risk is a matter of balance, agreed.
However some bodies thought our levels were poor:
“Co-convened by the World Bank
Group and the WHO, the GPMB works independently to provide expert assessments and
recommendations on the state of global preparedness.”
apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual … %20Sep.pdf
“Despite the increasingly dire risk of widespread epidemics, the world remains unprepared. The
Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) warns that epidemic-prone diseases like Ebola,
influenza and SARS are increasingly difficult to manage in the face of prolonged conflict, fragile
states, and forced migration. At the same time, the threat of a pandemic spreading around the
globe is a real one – a quick-moving pathogen has the potential to kill tens of millions of people,
disrupt economies, and destabilize national security”
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Certainly the UK is only one of many countries unprepared for this pandemic, but I still say we are in a worse position than many others, because we weren`t even prepared for a normal winter.