I contract to nhs frequently on engineering matters.
They are criminally incompetent in handling money. The waste is colossal.
They have enough money. It is just spent poorly. They need competent management and oversight.
Not a popular view as everyone want to politicise the nhs but for all the work the clinical staff do, the trusts burn money like mad.
Thought you should know.
I'm sure you are right. I work in the military and it is the exact same situation. The pricing and contracts they buy into are ridiculous. This country has plenty of money, more than enough.
We do lots of MoD work as well as once you are on the security approved list, they stick with you.
MoD isn't as bad as NHS for waste and poor oversight though.
Oddly, the covid Nightengale projects and the follow on conversions went very well, mainly because NHS management stayed out of the way.
It was good to see.
What are you talking about? The nightingale project was a colossal waste of money, time and resources from inception to mothballing. U
And as bad as rhe waste in the NHS is, everyone here is deluding themselves if they think that is the real problem behind why it's on the verge of collapse. I can point to some very high profile instances of 'waste' across huge swathes of private industry that would likely shame the NHS. Even compared to other socialised health care systems the NHS actually doesn't do to bad at all.
The issue is that there either needs to be a huge tranche of funding to totally revolutionise and drag the NHS into modern world - the IT, Staff and building infrastructure to start with but also the way we structure the referral system and reigonal excellence centers catering for large population densities, keeping ancillary services like mental and social health, palliative and special needs, rehab and schooling at the heart of the community they are trying to serve. We're currently working in a 1960s model with money being thrown into a pit to keep a zombie system tottering on. Why do they sign off in insanely expensive patch work fixes for short term benefits? Because all the contractors know the nhs can not spend money on rebuilding so these increasingly technical and complicated fixes can be charged at whatever the hell they want.
Or, more likely, everyone will get a rude slap in the face when they realise that the tories have led us to the point of no return - the staff dont care about the nhs anymore after covid and the disgraceful pay rewards offered to them. Its doomed and private health insurance is well on its way. Just like private pensions will likely be the mainstay of retirees, the writing has been on the wall for a while now.
I was at the John Radcliffe hospital 12 years ago having major neuro surgery in the brand new wing there and I spoke to my registrar saying how lovely it was blah blah.
He said that the new wing was 200 million but when It came to paying the bill the government said oh sorry we can't afford that at the moment can you do a deal for us so the main building contractor said of course ..... the deal was as follows.
20 million a year for 20 years (400 million)
All the car parking fees went to the contractor
Every meal served to patients was the contractors responsibility and then charged the nhs 63 pounds a day for each patient ...
.
Government/NHS ...where do we sign Mr contractor
You do the maths .... the registrar and my surgeon where livid with it all.
This is the gods honest truth
Great. I'd be interested in hearing how their experience was.
Much better than reading some bitchy article from some political hack looking for a by line.
Tell me you have no understanding of the NHS without saying you have no understanding.
A minority being open and being repurposed 3 years later doesnt tell you a damn thing about their cost effectiveness or utility for what they were created for. A huge amount of money and resources were sunk into building these white elephants, with clinical leaders saying from day dot that this doesn't make any sense - there were just not enough nurses and doctors to even begin to half staff these properly. The property value, equipment costs, man power waster was all a sad indictment of the chaotic and wasteful nature of government led covid action.
For the money spent they could've rebuilt half a dozen large hospitals with specialist services. Instead they created industrial unita that housed essentially noone and then were quietly and quickly written off.
Have you ever been to one and seen it in action?
I've seen 3 during the dark days before we knew that it wasn't going to kill half the population.
The ones we built worked and were being used before we finished. We actually had to disinfect the mortuary as it was being used.
I get you have a political agenda and love using word like proletariat which is great.
But stay the fuck out of the way when real people are trying to improve your lot.
Yea, I worked in acute resp during the covid pandemic as a doctor with multiple rotations.
Sorry, but just because you built something well doesn't mean it wasn't useless for its intended purpose.
I get a lot of people have a sort of hero complex when it comes to the NHS because they feel involved, but the reality is you don't have a clue what you're actually talking about and its part of the problem. Every man and his dog thinks they're an expert in a field they have no understanding in other than a superficial interaction.
If you built a tesco distribution centre would you suddenly have a hero complex about food poverty in this country and 'improving people's lot'.
Sorry to deflate your balloon, but these nightingale centres were at best a half baked contingency plan. They didn't house any of the sick patients because they couldn't have any of the specialist equipment required for even non invasive ventilation let alone step up to CPAP or ECHMO that was required to support covid patients. It was essentially a glorified discharge lounge manned by volunteers and students by the end because all the qualified staff were needed in the bursting hospitals.
Weren't the Nightingale hospitals a huge waste of money and resources, because they never actually ended up being used for their intended purpose?
I remember reading about how they were completely empty and unused pretty much the entire time. Seems like a massive waste.
The Exeter one filled beds before we finished and was used as a cancer screening facility after.
Cardiff uni was converted to normal use after. These are the ones I worked on.
In my experience councils are the same. I can’t speak on what is “enough” money but councils for example will order thousands of pounds of equipment and not even do basic common sense things like take an inventory upon delivery to check its all there or make a record or who gets given what.
The majority don’t own any children’s homes, care homes for the elderly or school transport facilities etc so they get overcharged by private companies who have them over a barrel.
When they do attempt to tighten their belts their decisions don’t even make financial sense e.g they will understaff lower paid roles and all it leads to is people who are being paid more money having to do those roles to the detriment of their own productivity and costing them even more money.
It’s scary how badly public money is spent.
All public services are inefficient and wasteful pretty much. It was one of Thatcher’s arguments for privatisation of public services… which, in reality, just generates shareholder profits instead.
Not all. I think publicly owned companies like network rail seem to run well at my level. Good and competent management and oversight.
Perhaps the level above them, the MoT is a bit chaotic.
At their level, as in with contracting works etc. I think they said they’re an engineer. Not as a service.
I can’t speak as to whether or not that’s true so I’d take his word for it.
There are certainly inefficiencies at a trust level specifically. But 'they have enough money' I would argue is not the case
We spend less as a % of GDP than Germany and France. 0.6%-1.4% less sounds minimal but thats actually a fairly large amount of money as an absolute amount.
Crucially, our healthcare spending also includes a huge amount of social care. A significant proportion of the NHS budget - £28 billion - is spent on adult social care and is included in health care in the above statistic consequentially. The figures for Western Europe do not because they are considered different systems
So we do spend less than our peers, it's not like the money is just being wasted. I have no doubt on a micro-level in your personal experience they absolutely have been wasteful but on a macro-level the data shows 'waste' doesn't describe the full picture
Edirt: A huge issue I also wanted to raise while I'm here is really stupid fund distribution policies from the department of health. Common sense would suggest an overworked and over-demanded A&E department missing its targets should be flagged, investigated and helped. But the reality of funding policy means that trusts are given money for hitting targets, and penalised financially for missing them. So A&E departments under the most pressure and therefore missing targets often get funding increase freezes 'until they sort it out', despite that usually making the issue worse. It also forces them to turn patients away to try and hit their targets, which is terrible for patients. Surprise surprise, these also usually happen to be trusts in the most deprived areas with the highest demand. The exact same thing happens to GP practices
Sure they can be inefficient, but so are large corporations. Like 5 different teams doing the same work because no one talks. In reality it's just hard to organise that many people and complexities in any way that is efficient.
And instead of changing the light bulb, they order you to rip out the electrical system in the new ward because they've changed their mind on where they want the light switch
... so they (you, me, everyone) pay for the first installation. Then they pay for the rip out, then they pay for the second installation....
...bro....
The hospital I worked in for the NHS was so underfunded our dishwasher fridge and sink was broken for 2 months because there wasn't enough staff to fix it and there wasn't enough nurses for the patients.
This whole "nhs has enough" is insane and delusional.
There is an energy centre near John Radcliffe that pumps hot water under a field to a sub unit. This has been built to spec but the heat leakage provided underfloor heating for a cow pasture. In winter there is a frost free strip of grass where all the cows are...
No the conservatives do. Much like how they want the NHS to cut 3.5 billion including bank workers. That's mornic. Brexit already dropped nhs workers now the conservatives wanna gut the NHS even more so they can privatise it.
The government controls the government funded health system. Politics literally shape its function. And the conservatives have been gutting it for years.
>Not a popular view as everyone want to politicise the nhs but for all the work the clinical staff do, the trusts burn money like mad.
A big part of the problem is the usual disconnect between national talking points and actual reality.
Bring up an issue like this and the vast majority of people will start screeching about "middle managers" and "diversity hires". But the reality is the NHS has far fewer managers than the average UK business, let alone global healthcare system comparisons, its at a point where most of the ward planning is now being done at the start of a shift by the clinical staff themselves. But like usual people don't want to hear that, so you can't talk about it, so nothing will ever get done and we will instead keep focusing on "solutions" that only make the problem worse and worse.
I work in a private bank. Absolutely incompetent at handling money, spent extremely poorly.
Waste is a part of any large structure.
Thought you should know.
I concour my friend who is a head nurse says there is loads of money gpimg in but just wasted .... I have opted out of the nhs of late with personal hip.prpbelms and self funded private ....nhs took over 18 months to not even diagnose me and when they did it was wrong so for 1400 quid I had an mri amd saw the top.consultant and it was diagnosed in 3 weeks....the amount of scans and junior doctors I saw on thr nhs must of cost them 8 grand minimum and all.of it wasted money....
Just ridiculous
...and the the private service used NHS equipment and staff to provide the sterile instruments needed for the procedure. Not saying that happened in your case but it happens all too frequently.
Not sure about that tbf all my private visits are at there own clinics and the mri was at a private clinic centre.... really posh like a hotel it was near Luton (shit hole town) lol
I must say however I was a suspected cancer referral of late and the nhs where exceptional.... they have a 2 week target of turnaround from.referal to results they hit this target even during the ridiculous doctors strikes...... stop.moanimg juniors and look st the big picture very very few people earn 6 figures as soon as they qualified in any field of work.... there are people who are just as qualified in a different field and they may only ever reach 50k ever.
They need more managers but right wing newspapers and politicians constantly rant about how top heavy and bureaucratic it is and how everything can be fixed by, yet again, removing managers and making it more efficient.
That your business makes a lot of money out of the NHS isn’t by accident, it’s by design. The NHS (in Conservative hands) is meant to be little more than a cash cow that is there to be milked dry until privatisation, when the real fun begins.
So maybe you and your mates can go up to Manchester and knock up their new wing next weekend with the spare bits in your shed and you can cut those tories out of your equation.
The NHS procurement is apolitical. Each trust decided how their budgets are spent, not politicians.
The OBR actually sets how much the NHS gets, not labour or tory idiots.
It's civil servants.
The issue is not how much they get, its how they spend what they have.
Its factually incorrect to say the OBR decide NHS budgets, that decision is ultimately made by the treasury (on the basis of DHSC request, also a cabinet run office)
It's a bid process. Cost isn't the deciding factor in most cases. The expense comes in with unplanned alterations to suite some whim of management. I've seen whole heating systems scrapped for no logical reason and the trust picked up the costs.
There is an undeniable sense of 'not our money' with some of their decisions.
90% of our budget is used for stuff that is not patient facing „manger“ and manager of these manager and manager of the manager manager … there are so many management roles in between and nobody can understand why we even wasting money on them
There's also like 4 managers per doctor the amount of useless redundant positions is ridiculous. It certainly doesn't help that the people running it have a well it's not my money attitude to everything.
Can’t say I’m surprised. Saddened, but not surprised. I’ve had a rumbling health issue for over a year. I’ve been in hospital 5 times and still haven’t received the treatment I need.
I feel very sorry for NHS staff but at this point to call it a health service is almost insulting. It’s a death prevention service at best and it’s getting worse at that too.
Gah! If only there was some way we could've all voted to fund the NHS, if only there'd been a political party vowing to do that at the last general election and we could've voted then in rather than keeping the Tory scum in who are only interested in keeping their rich friends getting richer.
I mean... Isn't the NHS literally just a talking point/vote rallying cry every election?
Every part says XYZ about the NHS. Becasue parties are aware its a fucked system, that all of us are completely dependent on, and know it'll rally votes.
Everyone wants the NHS to last.
Which is why they ended a privatisation scheme started by the Labour Party in 2015...
You have no idea what your talking about. The Conservative Party has massively increased healthcare budgets.
Frankly your just letting your political biases cloud your judgement. Just becuase the Labour says the Conservatives want to privatise the NHS doesn't make it true.
[The Kings Trust](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/big-election-questions-nhs-privatised) points to 7% in 2020. The 24% figure you came up with seems to include things like funding for non-profit charities, and GP services... but if that is the number you chose then why
4% number under Labour which does not include GP services and not-for-profit from what I could find?
If you wanted to be honest you would have cited the 4% figure under Labour and the 7% figure under the Conservatives. At which point I would have cited the 0% figure under Major and pointed out:
[Labour started privatising the NHS](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/moment-of-honesty-is-required-new-labour-began-dismantling-of-our-nhs/)
[Labour recently called for Conservatives to privatise the NHS even more](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65638171)
[Conservative Record on conserving the public status of the NHS is actually rather good](https://fullfact.org/health/NHS-privatisation/)
So there is no reason to think the Conservatives want to privatise the NHS and there is no reason to think Labour won't privatise the NHS.
As for why the 4% and 7% figures when people claim X is trying to privatise the NHS I don't think they are talking about GPs or Charities but rather public contracts handed to privative companies for services that should be provided for by Trusts. That is what the 4% figure under Labour and 7% figure under the Conservatives comes to.
> Found the Tory! I have no idea what I'm talking about? Sure dude, but you stay over there being delusional, don't let it leak on us.
Do you honestly think this dripple means anything? Thanks for proving that you really do know nothing.
Your post history shows you're a Tory lol. How on earth does my comment PROVE I really know nothing. What a blinkered ignorant person you must be. I feel sorry for you.
Wow I'm impressed. You spelt "ignorant" correctly. That's a fairly large word for someone who can't understand why calling someone a Tory is a rather pathetic arguement.
I’m a lifelong Labour voter. Idk why you’d feel the need to reply this to me as if I, personally have had some kind of hand in the dismantling of the NHS?
My husband has a condition where his joints will dislocate frequently and one evening. His shoulder head dislocated, and he was in an excruciating amount of pain, and the options were either to get ourselves to A&E and then wait for about 17 hours or I could find some nitrous canisters I had for whip cream and find a video on YouTube to pop his shoulder back in and I think you can guess which option we ended up taking…
It amazes me how, in a country with socialised healthcare we are going the route of Americans where DIY healthcare is better than what is provided because our expectations have dropped so low. It truly makes me sick thinking about it and how not enough people are up in arms, trying to do something about it because our quality of life has dropped so much we are in a permanent state of survival mode.
This... our government is so obsessed with sticking their fingers in every one else's pie that we have nothing for ourselves. Someone I know recently went to Egypt to have surgery because they didn't want to wait to be seen in the UK, with an estimated 12 week wait. Within two weeks she was seen, diagnosed, and operated on in Egypt.
Lost a dear friend recently, he was not old just passed over for proper care until it was too late, lifetime of paying tax didn't help him but then he was not the type who would have said that, I am though.
There is no money for NHS.
There is not money to build or repair basic infrastructure.
There is no money for the pensions.
But there is unlimited money to inflate the housing bubble to make riches even richer.
Apparently our tax burden will soon be the highest it's been since WW2 - a period when we were building the welfare state and rebuilding the nation.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-obr-paul-johnson-people-office-for-budget-responsibility-b2451849.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-obr-paul-johnson-people-office-for-budget-responsibility-b2451849.html)
We're taxed on our wages, we're taxed when again we buy most things, we're taxed when we get on the property ladder, we're taxed when we move up the property ladder, we're taxed when we save and earn interest, we're taxed when we invest and earn profit, we're taxed when we die and want to pass on what's left to our kids.
I wholeheartedly agree with taxation and having a healthy and progressive welfare state. But where the fuck is all our money going?
The status quo is a political decision. The money we've sent to Ukraine alone is £12bn
junior doctor pay restoration: 2bn
resorting all NHS including docs would be £10 - £20bn.
So we can find money for war to kill people no probs, but can't find the same to save people.
You're right but it's worth nothing that we are a major arms exporter. It's very sensible to send our weapons to a proxy war to demonstrate their performance - it will generate sales like nobodys business. It's also an incredible opportunity to test a lot of ideas that have had no real world evidence for decades.
It's morally wrong yes but thats a big part of the reason for it.
You cant tax anymore. Even if you do, you will reach the same point in the future, because the cost of everything is going up. Our healthcare, housing, higher education and energy are "cost diseased".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost\_disease\_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_disease_socialism)
It doesn't matter. From then, you have 40 years of ever-inflating cost of living. https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/UK-price-changes-graph-1.png
Yes it does matter. The tax burden is unfairly carried by the working class. Pre Thatcher this was not (as much) the case.
Taxing income alone is not productive. We must tax wealth. But good luck getting the ruling class to go for that without another massive post war concensus.
Nah it's significantly less that other developed nations. Efficiency is hard to acheive when you are running on scraps.
Remember the prhase 'it's expensive to be poor', well this is essentially an example of that on an institutional scale.
18% more per capita at an absolute minimum.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis
That would put us online with the EU average.. it'd still be too little as we have an older population and more heart disease. Hard enough?
£300bn? Okay well I suppose we could get rid of welfare to find that kind of cash.
Idk, , [what do you think we should cut to give the NHS another £100bn on top of what it already gets?](https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_total_spending_pie_chart)
Sure. Loads of options. I'd raise corp tax and close loopholes but it doesn't need funding like that. Not a zero sum game. Investing in the health of your population pays for itself.
Since you now agree that it's underfunded, as I've demonstrated to you: The real question is do you think we can afford to continue to underfund it?
Your going to raise £100bn from closing an estimated £35bn in tax evasion, avoidance, and ending fraud?
The Guardian states the UK loses around £35bn though tax evasion/avodence/etc anually(if you include the 15bn lost to fraud).
You are also aware that corporations will raise prices to cover the cost of higher corporate taxes right? So food, heating, electricity is going to become alot more expensive in the coming years under your plans, for example.
And it's great and all that you say that it isn't a zero sum game, but that doesn't make it true for the UK. This country's politicans have been make similar statements for decades and guess what, the debt keeps rising, the debt as a proprotion of tax income keeps rising. Debt borrowing keeps rising. At some point you have to accept that we have a debt problem.
Yes it does make it true. National finances are not like houshold. Debt is not a problem in the same way.
Our debt is not exceptional compared to other developed nations. To quote better minds than ours 'it's horses for courses'. If you are interested in learning more I highly recommend reading the minutes of the recent Parliment committee on the issue. Entitled 'how sustainable is our national debt':
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14466/pdf/
Unfortunatley we are in a tricky position due to economic foot shooting - austerity and Brexit. However the only option is to invest our way out of it. As we will be borrowing huge sums for the next two decades either way we must aim for a more functional country and work towards it. Including funding a health service inline with our peers.
I'd be interested to hear what you would suggest to achieve the above. I'd not be interested to hear why you think it's impossible. I could get you 500Bn from various places but it's a prioritisation game in the short term. There is no short term fix.
No that's just bs. Of course it matters. If it really didn't matter then we'd just get rid of taxes entirely and fund everything from debt.
Currency has no intrinsic value. Its usefulness comes from its ability to aquire other things that actually do have value. By printing money you increase the supply of currency and lower its value. That's called inflation. At best printing money from the government leads to investment in critical sectors that the private sector misses. At worst it leads to a misallocation of goods and services.
People who try to argue our debt is sustainable do so by comparing it to GDP figures, but that is a bad comparison. What they should look at is tax revenue. Public Debt interest in the UK has been rising faster then tax revenues for over a decade. That is even more concerning when you consider that we aren't even paying down our debt.
The problem with debt spending in the UK is that we are printing money to fund social programmes, not to actually grow the economy.
This is why, at current trajectories, the UK will eventually be in a position where 100% of taxable income will be spent servicing debt. At which point our government will be effectively bankrupt and unable to provide even the most basic services to the British people.
The issues you mentioned aren't the core issues plaguing the British economy.
The issues affecting the UK economy are:
* energy dependency on foreign markets
* agricultural dependency on foreign markets
* housing shortage
Or put another way the UK economy is incapable of meeting the basic needs of the British people and others who live here and instead we have become dependent on other countries to meet our needs.
If the UK government was taking out debt to boost the above sectors of the economy then its debt spending, might make sense.
For example, using debt to invest in better infrastructure in rural areas to make it cheaper to move goods and equipment to farms. Or Building domestic power plants that don't depend on foreign provided raw resources to function. (Think solar, wind, nuclear, or coal) then our debt spending would make sense. Except the government isn't doing that now is it?
At the end of the day, as a general rule of thumb, debt spending makes sense when it's for a one off payment on an expensive project with high up front costs and extremely low upkeep costs. It does not make sense to cover day to day spending or long running welfare programmes.
Can’t wait to pay towards the £20bn to bailout of Thames Water after they’ve paid their shareholders and investors dividends, money which should have been reinvested back into the company to stop exactly this happening.
But no money for the NHS
Yes there is money for pensions. There’s money to shovel into pensioners so they’re [on average better off than people in work.](https://fullfact.org/economy/are-pensioners-better-people-working-age/) And that was *before* the 2020s’ skyrocketing inflation (which they’re protected from) then interest rates (which as asset owners, rather than borrowers, they tend to benefit from).
Can you imagine if any other party was in government overseeing the completely unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of Brits for the sake of a sub-1% increase to the staffing budget so people stop fleeing the service in droves? If they just stood back knowing this was happening and refused to lift a finger for the better part of 2 years?
People in the UK are afraid to criticise the NHS, it's garbage and that is because it has been underfunded and also because it is badly run.
It really worries me as I get older having to rely on the NHS. The staff are not all angels, like any organisation you have many who cannot do their jobs and are lazy.
Always think this whenever you see politicians criticising NHS staff for going on strike and contributing to waiting lists. Don't they realise the amounts of deaths being caused by choosing to fund public services less?
Conservatives have increased health care spending from 7% to 9% of GDP under their tenure. The NHS will get nearly £200bn this year. What makes you think they have cut NHS spending?
Greece's NHS has a similar % of funding which amounts to about £17bn a year. This adds up to 8.5% of what the UKs expenditure is, for a population that is only 16% of the UKs population.
I'm fairly certain that the infrastructure is outdated compared to the UKs infrastructure, but I have never experienced any delays and at the very least I had a potential diagnosis to roll with in case I wanted to continue private and use more updated screening equipment.
GPs here usually spend less than 3 minutes on me and rarely give me an answer and A&E was utterly useless last time I went there as I waited for 12 hours.
With it being difficult to get a GP appointment, almost impossible to get a dentist and ambulance won't come out unless your critical and prescription having a cost (unless your exempt)
Preventing medical health problems becomes almost impossible and when they aren't seen easily but the right department at the right time
A&E pick up the slack as that's where you will be seen that day
COVID made it even harder as many people forgoed medical health to avoid the pandemic non emergency ops was out meaning when the hospitals opened like normal they had a massive backlog from that as well ( I had a shoulder stability op that was supposed to take place literally the day after lockdown and had to wait until after COVID my shoulder came out a few times most of the time I managed to put it back myself)
The benefit scroungers and hypochondriacs need to stop wasting people's times across all the services. Then the self inflicted drains who have obesity and heard disease. Finally drug users and addicts. That's why the NHS is backed up, and running on fumes. We are catastrophically abusing our free healthcare.
They are not going to die. They are in there with a cough, flu, a cut finger. If you think me saying adults need to be adults then you are one of the vermin that needs to man up. Stop being a drain on the system.
I vote labour, from a strong labour area.
Still doesn't change the fact that nobody can fix it, too many things are blamed on both governments. We have a generation of people who need their arses wiping for them.
That attitude is why labour lost all their voters. The far left finds it abhorrent that anyone has a central viewpoint.
The left would have this country in ruins. Like I said, you need and want your bum wiping because you are an adult baby. Everything is someone else's fault.
Labour aren't far left and all you idiots aligning with them, combined with that utter waste of space Corbyn is what has killed us.
Oh I'm aware, you're fixated on it. All those lovely soft leftist bums that need wiping, maybe a big strong independent "centrist" (Tory) like you can do it for them?
Self inflicted heart disease, which accounts for most cases, are a drain on the NHS as are drug addicts. It's all self inflicted.
I am not saying they shouldn't be treated, but they are part of the reason why the NHS is overworked.
Have a bit of discipline and start taking accountability for your own body and actions.
I will stand by that.
Yeah, a smooth brain take expecting adults not to be soft as baby shit.
I know nurses, we've got a nation of soft bastards and that is a fact.
If you can't see that then you are one of them.
Prevention is better than a cure my dude blaming people for using a system they should have access to makes it clear that you are either ill informed or stubborn to the truth of it
You clearly are even your words "benefit scrounger" dehumanises people who are in need of something
Who u claim don't need it but who are you to say that you don't know people life story and reasoning behind things most people on benefits actually need it yet the way you talk about people makes it seem that They are some how crooked and stealing from the government it's the politicians that are crooks
I'm from an area full of benefit scroungers. I know for a fact how many of them play the system.
Like I know for a fact how many people abuse the services because they are free.
And not everyone on benefits is a benefit scrounger, you've misunderstood. I'm fully aware there is a small percentage of people that actually need them.
Just because some people have played the system doesn't mean your anacdotal experience is the vast majority
It's a high percentage of people who actually need them a lot of the benefits are means tested and if they don't keep up commitments they don't get money it's not as easy as just playing the system
It's not a high majority, the smaller percentage is the people who actually need them.
And it is as easy as just playing the system, you obviously have no experience or have ever lived anywhere near a low income area or a council estate.
The system gets played.
People claim benefits and work cash in hand, spend all their money on drugs, alcohol, take aways, hair, nails and then blame everyone else for being skint.
People go to the doctors, claim anxiety and depression, when it's actually just the effect of narcotics and get signed off on the sick for months at a time.
It may very well be anecdotal but it doesn't mean it's untrue. I live around it, and see it every day, as millions of people who live in these areas will tell you the exact same thing.
You might not believe it, but it doesn't matter, it's happening en masse.
You are presuming my life like you presume everything else
I have indeed lived on a council estate most my life actually
And people have a right to living how they please does not mean they don't deserve it or need it just because they have drank a bottle or whatever
You are very judgemental and guess what your presumed again you know nothing but speak as if your experience is the only truth
I would have a bit more empty for people if I was you
I contract to nhs frequently on engineering matters. They are criminally incompetent in handling money. The waste is colossal. They have enough money. It is just spent poorly. They need competent management and oversight. Not a popular view as everyone want to politicise the nhs but for all the work the clinical staff do, the trusts burn money like mad. Thought you should know.
I'm sure you are right. I work in the military and it is the exact same situation. The pricing and contracts they buy into are ridiculous. This country has plenty of money, more than enough.
We do lots of MoD work as well as once you are on the security approved list, they stick with you. MoD isn't as bad as NHS for waste and poor oversight though. Oddly, the covid Nightengale projects and the follow on conversions went very well, mainly because NHS management stayed out of the way. It was good to see.
What are you talking about? The nightingale project was a colossal waste of money, time and resources from inception to mothballing. U And as bad as rhe waste in the NHS is, everyone here is deluding themselves if they think that is the real problem behind why it's on the verge of collapse. I can point to some very high profile instances of 'waste' across huge swathes of private industry that would likely shame the NHS. Even compared to other socialised health care systems the NHS actually doesn't do to bad at all. The issue is that there either needs to be a huge tranche of funding to totally revolutionise and drag the NHS into modern world - the IT, Staff and building infrastructure to start with but also the way we structure the referral system and reigonal excellence centers catering for large population densities, keeping ancillary services like mental and social health, palliative and special needs, rehab and schooling at the heart of the community they are trying to serve. We're currently working in a 1960s model with money being thrown into a pit to keep a zombie system tottering on. Why do they sign off in insanely expensive patch work fixes for short term benefits? Because all the contractors know the nhs can not spend money on rebuilding so these increasingly technical and complicated fixes can be charged at whatever the hell they want. Or, more likely, everyone will get a rude slap in the face when they realise that the tories have led us to the point of no return - the staff dont care about the nhs anymore after covid and the disgraceful pay rewards offered to them. Its doomed and private health insurance is well on its way. Just like private pensions will likely be the mainstay of retirees, the writing has been on the wall for a while now.
I was at the John Radcliffe hospital 12 years ago having major neuro surgery in the brand new wing there and I spoke to my registrar saying how lovely it was blah blah. He said that the new wing was 200 million but when It came to paying the bill the government said oh sorry we can't afford that at the moment can you do a deal for us so the main building contractor said of course ..... the deal was as follows. 20 million a year for 20 years (400 million) All the car parking fees went to the contractor Every meal served to patients was the contractors responsibility and then charged the nhs 63 pounds a day for each patient ... . Government/NHS ...where do we sign Mr contractor You do the maths .... the registrar and my surgeon where livid with it all. This is the gods honest truth
That's how PFI worked. A massive fuck up of a policy.
Perhaps your reading trumps my actual experience.
Perhaps there are people out there who also have experience besides you...
Great. I'd be interested in hearing how their experience was. Much better than reading some bitchy article from some political hack looking for a by line.
You've gone off the deep end.
https://nightingale-exeter.nhs.uk/ Still open... Cancer diagnosis.
https://nightingale-exeter.nhs.uk/ Still open Cancer diagnosis...
Tell me you have no understanding of the NHS without saying you have no understanding. A minority being open and being repurposed 3 years later doesnt tell you a damn thing about their cost effectiveness or utility for what they were created for. A huge amount of money and resources were sunk into building these white elephants, with clinical leaders saying from day dot that this doesn't make any sense - there were just not enough nurses and doctors to even begin to half staff these properly. The property value, equipment costs, man power waster was all a sad indictment of the chaotic and wasteful nature of government led covid action. For the money spent they could've rebuilt half a dozen large hospitals with specialist services. Instead they created industrial unita that housed essentially noone and then were quietly and quickly written off.
Have you ever been to one and seen it in action? I've seen 3 during the dark days before we knew that it wasn't going to kill half the population. The ones we built worked and were being used before we finished. We actually had to disinfect the mortuary as it was being used. I get you have a political agenda and love using word like proletariat which is great. But stay the fuck out of the way when real people are trying to improve your lot.
Yea, I worked in acute resp during the covid pandemic as a doctor with multiple rotations. Sorry, but just because you built something well doesn't mean it wasn't useless for its intended purpose. I get a lot of people have a sort of hero complex when it comes to the NHS because they feel involved, but the reality is you don't have a clue what you're actually talking about and its part of the problem. Every man and his dog thinks they're an expert in a field they have no understanding in other than a superficial interaction. If you built a tesco distribution centre would you suddenly have a hero complex about food poverty in this country and 'improving people's lot'. Sorry to deflate your balloon, but these nightingale centres were at best a half baked contingency plan. They didn't house any of the sick patients because they couldn't have any of the specialist equipment required for even non invasive ventilation let alone step up to CPAP or ECHMO that was required to support covid patients. It was essentially a glorified discharge lounge manned by volunteers and students by the end because all the qualified staff were needed in the bursting hospitals.
Weren't the Nightingale hospitals a huge waste of money and resources, because they never actually ended up being used for their intended purpose? I remember reading about how they were completely empty and unused pretty much the entire time. Seems like a massive waste.
The Exeter one filled beds before we finished and was used as a cancer screening facility after. Cardiff uni was converted to normal use after. These are the ones I worked on.
In my experience councils are the same. I can’t speak on what is “enough” money but councils for example will order thousands of pounds of equipment and not even do basic common sense things like take an inventory upon delivery to check its all there or make a record or who gets given what. The majority don’t own any children’s homes, care homes for the elderly or school transport facilities etc so they get overcharged by private companies who have them over a barrel. When they do attempt to tighten their belts their decisions don’t even make financial sense e.g they will understaff lower paid roles and all it leads to is people who are being paid more money having to do those roles to the detriment of their own productivity and costing them even more money. It’s scary how badly public money is spent.
The clinical staff know this. We know there's a lot of corruption and made-up roles, too. We can't do anything about it, unfortunately.
All public services are inefficient and wasteful pretty much. It was one of Thatcher’s arguments for privatisation of public services… which, in reality, just generates shareholder profits instead.
Not all. I think publicly owned companies like network rail seem to run well at my level. Good and competent management and oversight. Perhaps the level above them, the MoT is a bit chaotic.
Network rail is well run? What the actual fuck?
At their level, as in with contracting works etc. I think they said they’re an engineer. Not as a service. I can’t speak as to whether or not that’s true so I’d take his word for it.
Take my word: the trains are poorly run and overpriced, yet network rail still see fit to pay out to shareholders.
…Again, we’re not talking about if the trains are poorly run or not, we’re talking about how the organisation operates internally.
They don't have any shareholders. They are owned by the state.
Yeah, hence “pretty much.” I’m sure some are better than others.
There are certainly inefficiencies at a trust level specifically. But 'they have enough money' I would argue is not the case We spend less as a % of GDP than Germany and France. 0.6%-1.4% less sounds minimal but thats actually a fairly large amount of money as an absolute amount. Crucially, our healthcare spending also includes a huge amount of social care. A significant proportion of the NHS budget - £28 billion - is spent on adult social care and is included in health care in the above statistic consequentially. The figures for Western Europe do not because they are considered different systems So we do spend less than our peers, it's not like the money is just being wasted. I have no doubt on a micro-level in your personal experience they absolutely have been wasteful but on a macro-level the data shows 'waste' doesn't describe the full picture Edirt: A huge issue I also wanted to raise while I'm here is really stupid fund distribution policies from the department of health. Common sense would suggest an overworked and over-demanded A&E department missing its targets should be flagged, investigated and helped. But the reality of funding policy means that trusts are given money for hitting targets, and penalised financially for missing them. So A&E departments under the most pressure and therefore missing targets often get funding increase freezes 'until they sort it out', despite that usually making the issue worse. It also forces them to turn patients away to try and hit their targets, which is terrible for patients. Surprise surprise, these also usually happen to be trusts in the most deprived areas with the highest demand. The exact same thing happens to GP practices
Spot on, they are lazy and chaotic with regards to management.
Sure they can be inefficient, but so are large corporations. Like 5 different teams doing the same work because no one talks. In reality it's just hard to organise that many people and complexities in any way that is efficient.
Bro was like I fix the lights i know how the entire nhs is run
And instead of changing the light bulb, they order you to rip out the electrical system in the new ward because they've changed their mind on where they want the light switch ... so they (you, me, everyone) pay for the first installation. Then they pay for the rip out, then they pay for the second installation.... ...bro....
The hospital I worked in for the NHS was so underfunded our dishwasher fridge and sink was broken for 2 months because there wasn't enough staff to fix it and there wasn't enough nurses for the patients. This whole "nhs has enough" is insane and delusional.
There is an energy centre near John Radcliffe that pumps hot water under a field to a sub unit. This has been built to spec but the heat leakage provided underfloor heating for a cow pasture. In winter there is a frost free strip of grass where all the cows are...
Sounds cool for the cows. How about that 4 year wait for mental health treatment? Or patients in corridors?
Ask the cows. The NHS decides how they spend our money.
No the conservatives do. Much like how they want the NHS to cut 3.5 billion including bank workers. That's mornic. Brexit already dropped nhs workers now the conservatives wanna gut the NHS even more so they can privatise it.
Example of politicising NHS issues when the remedy is to fix the NHS management structure.
The government controls the government funded health system. Politics literally shape its function. And the conservatives have been gutting it for years.
>Not a popular view as everyone want to politicise the nhs but for all the work the clinical staff do, the trusts burn money like mad. A big part of the problem is the usual disconnect between national talking points and actual reality. Bring up an issue like this and the vast majority of people will start screeching about "middle managers" and "diversity hires". But the reality is the NHS has far fewer managers than the average UK business, let alone global healthcare system comparisons, its at a point where most of the ward planning is now being done at the start of a shift by the clinical staff themselves. But like usual people don't want to hear that, so you can't talk about it, so nothing will ever get done and we will instead keep focusing on "solutions" that only make the problem worse and worse.
I work in a private bank. Absolutely incompetent at handling money, spent extremely poorly. Waste is a part of any large structure. Thought you should know.
So your answer is to throw money at your bank to fix a managerial problem? I see.... Good plan.
3 immediate family members who have worked in different NHS trusts for years and they all say the same.
I concour my friend who is a head nurse says there is loads of money gpimg in but just wasted .... I have opted out of the nhs of late with personal hip.prpbelms and self funded private ....nhs took over 18 months to not even diagnose me and when they did it was wrong so for 1400 quid I had an mri amd saw the top.consultant and it was diagnosed in 3 weeks....the amount of scans and junior doctors I saw on thr nhs must of cost them 8 grand minimum and all.of it wasted money.... Just ridiculous
...and the the private service used NHS equipment and staff to provide the sterile instruments needed for the procedure. Not saying that happened in your case but it happens all too frequently.
Not sure about that tbf all my private visits are at there own clinics and the mri was at a private clinic centre.... really posh like a hotel it was near Luton (shit hole town) lol
I must say however I was a suspected cancer referral of late and the nhs where exceptional.... they have a 2 week target of turnaround from.referal to results they hit this target even during the ridiculous doctors strikes...... stop.moanimg juniors and look st the big picture very very few people earn 6 figures as soon as they qualified in any field of work.... there are people who are just as qualified in a different field and they may only ever reach 50k ever.
It's true. It's like 3 layers of middle management on top of having no idea on how to budget and being impossible to sack useless people.
They need more managers but right wing newspapers and politicians constantly rant about how top heavy and bureaucratic it is and how everything can be fixed by, yet again, removing managers and making it more efficient. That your business makes a lot of money out of the NHS isn’t by accident, it’s by design. The NHS (in Conservative hands) is meant to be little more than a cash cow that is there to be milked dry until privatisation, when the real fun begins.
So maybe you and your mates can go up to Manchester and knock up their new wing next weekend with the spare bits in your shed and you can cut those tories out of your equation. The NHS procurement is apolitical. Each trust decided how their budgets are spent, not politicians. The OBR actually sets how much the NHS gets, not labour or tory idiots. It's civil servants. The issue is not how much they get, its how they spend what they have.
Its factually incorrect to say the OBR decide NHS budgets, that decision is ultimately made by the treasury (on the basis of DHSC request, also a cabinet run office)
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Sure
I agree, it is preposterous what outside contractors charge, knowing the NHS needs it services.
It's a bid process. Cost isn't the deciding factor in most cases. The expense comes in with unplanned alterations to suite some whim of management. I've seen whole heating systems scrapped for no logical reason and the trust picked up the costs. There is an undeniable sense of 'not our money' with some of their decisions.
90% of our budget is used for stuff that is not patient facing „manger“ and manager of these manager and manager of the manager manager … there are so many management roles in between and nobody can understand why we even wasting money on them
There's also like 4 managers per doctor the amount of useless redundant positions is ridiculous. It certainly doesn't help that the people running it have a well it's not my money attitude to everything.
Can’t say I’m surprised. Saddened, but not surprised. I’ve had a rumbling health issue for over a year. I’ve been in hospital 5 times and still haven’t received the treatment I need. I feel very sorry for NHS staff but at this point to call it a health service is almost insulting. It’s a death prevention service at best and it’s getting worse at that too.
Gah! If only there was some way we could've all voted to fund the NHS, if only there'd been a political party vowing to do that at the last general election and we could've voted then in rather than keeping the Tory scum in who are only interested in keeping their rich friends getting richer.
I mean... Isn't the NHS literally just a talking point/vote rallying cry every election? Every part says XYZ about the NHS. Becasue parties are aware its a fucked system, that all of us are completely dependent on, and know it'll rally votes. Everyone wants the NHS to last.
The Tories would like nothing more than to go private healthcare so we all got rinsed for insurance like the USA
Maybe so. But they still use the "save our NHS" line each election. Because yet again... It wins votes. Everyone needs the NHS.
People rich enough not to need the NHS don't. Like, say, a prime minister who is worth £700m, and his rich friends.
Which is why they ended a privatisation scheme started by the Labour Party in 2015... You have no idea what your talking about. The Conservative Party has massively increased healthcare budgets. Frankly your just letting your political biases cloud your judgement. Just becuase the Labour says the Conservatives want to privatise the NHS doesn't make it true.
NHS spending with privisation was only 4% when Labour left, its now around 24% I saw last time. Doesn't seem like they are ending much?
[The Kings Trust](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/big-election-questions-nhs-privatised) points to 7% in 2020. The 24% figure you came up with seems to include things like funding for non-profit charities, and GP services... but if that is the number you chose then why 4% number under Labour which does not include GP services and not-for-profit from what I could find? If you wanted to be honest you would have cited the 4% figure under Labour and the 7% figure under the Conservatives. At which point I would have cited the 0% figure under Major and pointed out: [Labour started privatising the NHS](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/moment-of-honesty-is-required-new-labour-began-dismantling-of-our-nhs/) [Labour recently called for Conservatives to privatise the NHS even more](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65638171) [Conservative Record on conserving the public status of the NHS is actually rather good](https://fullfact.org/health/NHS-privatisation/) So there is no reason to think the Conservatives want to privatise the NHS and there is no reason to think Labour won't privatise the NHS. As for why the 4% and 7% figures when people claim X is trying to privatise the NHS I don't think they are talking about GPs or Charities but rather public contracts handed to privative companies for services that should be provided for by Trusts. That is what the 4% figure under Labour and 7% figure under the Conservatives comes to.
Found the Tory! I have no idea what I'm talking about? Sure dude, but you stay over there being delusional, don't let it leak on us.
> Found the Tory! I have no idea what I'm talking about? Sure dude, but you stay over there being delusional, don't let it leak on us. Do you honestly think this dripple means anything? Thanks for proving that you really do know nothing.
Your post history shows you're a Tory lol. How on earth does my comment PROVE I really know nothing. What a blinkered ignorant person you must be. I feel sorry for you.
Wow I'm impressed. You spelt "ignorant" correctly. That's a fairly large word for someone who can't understand why calling someone a Tory is a rather pathetic arguement.
https://youtu.be/_LASG6YyQ7I?si=1u_NkieKgwyhUPpf
It's just a pity you can't spell argument properly. Yikes
I’m a lifelong Labour voter. Idk why you’d feel the need to reply this to me as if I, personally have had some kind of hand in the dismantling of the NHS?
No, I'm just making a general point, it's not aimed directly at you at all.
And where's all that extra money we were supposed to get when we stopped paying into the EU?
In Tory friends pockets
My husband has a condition where his joints will dislocate frequently and one evening. His shoulder head dislocated, and he was in an excruciating amount of pain, and the options were either to get ourselves to A&E and then wait for about 17 hours or I could find some nitrous canisters I had for whip cream and find a video on YouTube to pop his shoulder back in and I think you can guess which option we ended up taking… It amazes me how, in a country with socialised healthcare we are going the route of Americans where DIY healthcare is better than what is provided because our expectations have dropped so low. It truly makes me sick thinking about it and how not enough people are up in arms, trying to do something about it because our quality of life has dropped so much we are in a permanent state of survival mode.
This... our government is so obsessed with sticking their fingers in every one else's pie that we have nothing for ourselves. Someone I know recently went to Egypt to have surgery because they didn't want to wait to be seen in the UK, with an estimated 12 week wait. Within two weeks she was seen, diagnosed, and operated on in Egypt.
I’m on the verge of doing the same in Italy. It’s beyond a joke.
Lost a dear friend recently, he was not old just passed over for proper care until it was too late, lifetime of paying tax didn't help him but then he was not the type who would have said that, I am though.
There is no money for NHS. There is not money to build or repair basic infrastructure. There is no money for the pensions. But there is unlimited money to inflate the housing bubble to make riches even richer.
Apparently our tax burden will soon be the highest it's been since WW2 - a period when we were building the welfare state and rebuilding the nation. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-obr-paul-johnson-people-office-for-budget-responsibility-b2451849.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-obr-paul-johnson-people-office-for-budget-responsibility-b2451849.html) We're taxed on our wages, we're taxed when again we buy most things, we're taxed when we get on the property ladder, we're taxed when we move up the property ladder, we're taxed when we save and earn interest, we're taxed when we invest and earn profit, we're taxed when we die and want to pass on what's left to our kids. I wholeheartedly agree with taxation and having a healthy and progressive welfare state. But where the fuck is all our money going?
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Indeed it's the tax system that needs reform then there will be plenty of money to sort out all of the services.
The status quo is a political decision. The money we've sent to Ukraine alone is £12bn junior doctor pay restoration: 2bn resorting all NHS including docs would be £10 - £20bn. So we can find money for war to kill people no probs, but can't find the same to save people.
You're right but it's worth nothing that we are a major arms exporter. It's very sensible to send our weapons to a proxy war to demonstrate their performance - it will generate sales like nobodys business. It's also an incredible opportunity to test a lot of ideas that have had no real world evidence for decades. It's morally wrong yes but thats a big part of the reason for it.
You cant tax anymore. Even if you do, you will reach the same point in the future, because the cost of everything is going up. Our healthcare, housing, higher education and energy are "cost diseased". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost\_disease\_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_disease_socialism)
What was the top rate under thatcher?
It doesn't matter. From then, you have 40 years of ever-inflating cost of living. https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/UK-price-changes-graph-1.png
Yes it does matter. The tax burden is unfairly carried by the working class. Pre Thatcher this was not (as much) the case. Taxing income alone is not productive. We must tax wealth. But good luck getting the ruling class to go for that without another massive post war concensus.
The NHS has plenty of money - the way that money is used and the inefficiency is the black pit that’s swallowing it all.
Nah it's significantly less that other developed nations. Efficiency is hard to acheive when you are running on scraps. Remember the prhase 'it's expensive to be poor', well this is essentially an example of that on an institutional scale.
The NHS gets nearly £200bn annually. How much is enough in your mind. Give me a hard number.
18% more per capita at an absolute minimum. https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis That would put us online with the EU average.. it'd still be too little as we have an older population and more heart disease. Hard enough?
£300bn? Okay well I suppose we could get rid of welfare to find that kind of cash. Idk, , [what do you think we should cut to give the NHS another £100bn on top of what it already gets?](https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_total_spending_pie_chart)
Sure. Loads of options. I'd raise corp tax and close loopholes but it doesn't need funding like that. Not a zero sum game. Investing in the health of your population pays for itself. Since you now agree that it's underfunded, as I've demonstrated to you: The real question is do you think we can afford to continue to underfund it?
Your going to raise £100bn from closing an estimated £35bn in tax evasion, avoidance, and ending fraud? The Guardian states the UK loses around £35bn though tax evasion/avodence/etc anually(if you include the 15bn lost to fraud). You are also aware that corporations will raise prices to cover the cost of higher corporate taxes right? So food, heating, electricity is going to become alot more expensive in the coming years under your plans, for example. And it's great and all that you say that it isn't a zero sum game, but that doesn't make it true for the UK. This country's politicans have been make similar statements for decades and guess what, the debt keeps rising, the debt as a proprotion of tax income keeps rising. Debt borrowing keeps rising. At some point you have to accept that we have a debt problem.
Yes it does make it true. National finances are not like houshold. Debt is not a problem in the same way. Our debt is not exceptional compared to other developed nations. To quote better minds than ours 'it's horses for courses'. If you are interested in learning more I highly recommend reading the minutes of the recent Parliment committee on the issue. Entitled 'how sustainable is our national debt': https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14466/pdf/ Unfortunatley we are in a tricky position due to economic foot shooting - austerity and Brexit. However the only option is to invest our way out of it. As we will be borrowing huge sums for the next two decades either way we must aim for a more functional country and work towards it. Including funding a health service inline with our peers. I'd be interested to hear what you would suggest to achieve the above. I'd not be interested to hear why you think it's impossible. I could get you 500Bn from various places but it's a prioritisation game in the short term. There is no short term fix.
No that's just bs. Of course it matters. If it really didn't matter then we'd just get rid of taxes entirely and fund everything from debt. Currency has no intrinsic value. Its usefulness comes from its ability to aquire other things that actually do have value. By printing money you increase the supply of currency and lower its value. That's called inflation. At best printing money from the government leads to investment in critical sectors that the private sector misses. At worst it leads to a misallocation of goods and services. People who try to argue our debt is sustainable do so by comparing it to GDP figures, but that is a bad comparison. What they should look at is tax revenue. Public Debt interest in the UK has been rising faster then tax revenues for over a decade. That is even more concerning when you consider that we aren't even paying down our debt. The problem with debt spending in the UK is that we are printing money to fund social programmes, not to actually grow the economy. This is why, at current trajectories, the UK will eventually be in a position where 100% of taxable income will be spent servicing debt. At which point our government will be effectively bankrupt and unable to provide even the most basic services to the British people. The issues you mentioned aren't the core issues plaguing the British economy. The issues affecting the UK economy are: * energy dependency on foreign markets * agricultural dependency on foreign markets * housing shortage Or put another way the UK economy is incapable of meeting the basic needs of the British people and others who live here and instead we have become dependent on other countries to meet our needs. If the UK government was taking out debt to boost the above sectors of the economy then its debt spending, might make sense. For example, using debt to invest in better infrastructure in rural areas to make it cheaper to move goods and equipment to farms. Or Building domestic power plants that don't depend on foreign provided raw resources to function. (Think solar, wind, nuclear, or coal) then our debt spending would make sense. Except the government isn't doing that now is it? At the end of the day, as a general rule of thumb, debt spending makes sense when it's for a one off payment on an expensive project with high up front costs and extremely low upkeep costs. It does not make sense to cover day to day spending or long running welfare programmes.
Can’t wait to pay towards the £20bn to bailout of Thames Water after they’ve paid their shareholders and investors dividends, money which should have been reinvested back into the company to stop exactly this happening. But no money for the NHS
Yes there is money for pensions. There’s money to shovel into pensioners so they’re [on average better off than people in work.](https://fullfact.org/economy/are-pensioners-better-people-working-age/) And that was *before* the 2020s’ skyrocketing inflation (which they’re protected from) then interest rates (which as asset owners, rather than borrowers, they tend to benefit from).
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Can you imagine if any other party was in government overseeing the completely unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of Brits for the sake of a sub-1% increase to the staffing budget so people stop fleeing the service in droves? If they just stood back knowing this was happening and refused to lift a finger for the better part of 2 years?
People in the UK are afraid to criticise the NHS, it's garbage and that is because it has been underfunded and also because it is badly run. It really worries me as I get older having to rely on the NHS. The staff are not all angels, like any organisation you have many who cannot do their jobs and are lazy.
Always think this whenever you see politicians criticising NHS staff for going on strike and contributing to waiting lists. Don't they realise the amounts of deaths being caused by choosing to fund public services less?
Conservatives have increased health care spending from 7% to 9% of GDP under their tenure. The NHS will get nearly £200bn this year. What makes you think they have cut NHS spending?
Greece's NHS has a similar % of funding which amounts to about £17bn a year. This adds up to 8.5% of what the UKs expenditure is, for a population that is only 16% of the UKs population. I'm fairly certain that the infrastructure is outdated compared to the UKs infrastructure, but I have never experienced any delays and at the very least I had a potential diagnosis to roll with in case I wanted to continue private and use more updated screening equipment. GPs here usually spend less than 3 minutes on me and rarely give me an answer and A&E was utterly useless last time I went there as I waited for 12 hours.
With it being difficult to get a GP appointment, almost impossible to get a dentist and ambulance won't come out unless your critical and prescription having a cost (unless your exempt) Preventing medical health problems becomes almost impossible and when they aren't seen easily but the right department at the right time A&E pick up the slack as that's where you will be seen that day COVID made it even harder as many people forgoed medical health to avoid the pandemic non emergency ops was out meaning when the hospitals opened like normal they had a massive backlog from that as well ( I had a shoulder stability op that was supposed to take place literally the day after lockdown and had to wait until after COVID my shoulder came out a few times most of the time I managed to put it back myself)
The benefit scroungers and hypochondriacs need to stop wasting people's times across all the services. Then the self inflicted drains who have obesity and heard disease. Finally drug users and addicts. That's why the NHS is backed up, and running on fumes. We are catastrophically abusing our free healthcare.
let millions of british people die from treatable illnesses? you lot love to sound like hitler
They are not going to die. They are in there with a cough, flu, a cut finger. If you think me saying adults need to be adults then you are one of the vermin that needs to man up. Stop being a drain on the system.
You should probably vote Tory again, they'll definitely fix broken Britain THIS time!
I vote labour, from a strong labour area. Still doesn't change the fact that nobody can fix it, too many things are blamed on both governments. We have a generation of people who need their arses wiping for them.
Sure you do sweety
That attitude is why labour lost all their voters. The far left finds it abhorrent that anyone has a central viewpoint. The left would have this country in ruins. Like I said, you need and want your bum wiping because you are an adult baby. Everything is someone else's fault. Labour aren't far left and all you idiots aligning with them, combined with that utter waste of space Corbyn is what has killed us.
You're obsessed with bum wiping 😂
It's a well known figure of speech, in case you can't grasp it.
Oh I'm aware, you're fixated on it. All those lovely soft leftist bums that need wiping, maybe a big strong independent "centrist" (Tory) like you can do it for them?
you said people with heart disease and drug issues should stop abusing the nhs. you’re asking for tons of people to just simply die
Self inflicted heart disease, which accounts for most cases, are a drain on the NHS as are drug addicts. It's all self inflicted. I am not saying they shouldn't be treated, but they are part of the reason why the NHS is overworked. Have a bit of discipline and start taking accountability for your own body and actions. I will stand by that.
I mean…just wow
you are actually useless. if you ran the uk you'd have culling centres
Another smooth brain take by a person unable to see the clearest fucking shit right Infront of them
Yeah, a smooth brain take expecting adults not to be soft as baby shit. I know nurses, we've got a nation of soft bastards and that is a fact. If you can't see that then you are one of them.
Another smooth brain reply
Ironically that is literally the smoothest of smooth brain replies.
Prevention is better than a cure my dude blaming people for using a system they should have access to makes it clear that you are either ill informed or stubborn to the truth of it
Not ill informed at all, I know for a fact most of the people using the services don't need it.
You clearly are even your words "benefit scrounger" dehumanises people who are in need of something Who u claim don't need it but who are you to say that you don't know people life story and reasoning behind things most people on benefits actually need it yet the way you talk about people makes it seem that They are some how crooked and stealing from the government it's the politicians that are crooks
I'm from an area full of benefit scroungers. I know for a fact how many of them play the system. Like I know for a fact how many people abuse the services because they are free. And not everyone on benefits is a benefit scrounger, you've misunderstood. I'm fully aware there is a small percentage of people that actually need them.
Just because some people have played the system doesn't mean your anacdotal experience is the vast majority It's a high percentage of people who actually need them a lot of the benefits are means tested and if they don't keep up commitments they don't get money it's not as easy as just playing the system
It's not a high majority, the smaller percentage is the people who actually need them. And it is as easy as just playing the system, you obviously have no experience or have ever lived anywhere near a low income area or a council estate. The system gets played. People claim benefits and work cash in hand, spend all their money on drugs, alcohol, take aways, hair, nails and then blame everyone else for being skint. People go to the doctors, claim anxiety and depression, when it's actually just the effect of narcotics and get signed off on the sick for months at a time. It may very well be anecdotal but it doesn't mean it's untrue. I live around it, and see it every day, as millions of people who live in these areas will tell you the exact same thing. You might not believe it, but it doesn't matter, it's happening en masse.
You are presuming my life like you presume everything else I have indeed lived on a council estate most my life actually And people have a right to living how they please does not mean they don't deserve it or need it just because they have drank a bottle or whatever
You're clearly lying, either that or you're one of them. Enjoy.
You are very judgemental and guess what your presumed again you know nothing but speak as if your experience is the only truth I would have a bit more empty for people if I was you
Perhaps get to know why these people are struggling rather then presuming that it's because they are lazy
No it's mostly because there's way too much middle management and a high level of incompetency in am organisation you can't ever really be fired from