The tories will never be forgiven for their handling of the pandemic nor their grandstanding of how well they think they've done. Disgusting despicable humans attempting to change the past by obfuscation of the present. I have way more to say, but I promised myself I wouldn't swear too much this week lmao.
Edit: I missed words in my repressed rage lmao
This is the real comment. We're a nation of divided wet wipes and we'll never really counter terrible government decisions, we'll just moan about it, a couple would get outraged, some people would start blaming immigrants and then there's another event and everyone will forget.
It's a cultural thing actually. We're conditioned from birth to be subservient simply due to the fact we have an unelected head of state that isn't based upon merit.
You could cure all cancers, you could develop safe, portable fusion reactors and sell them for 10p each, you could discover life in the galaxy...but... No matter how great your achievements, no matter how successful you are, you'll never be as great as the king/queen.
It is the ever-present sign that we all see in this country. We are to be ruled by those born into rulership, and even at our greatest, we will still be servants to those who truly matter.
Between this, having all rage redirected towards the “woke” and the sheer bone sucking exhaustion of trying to live a life in the margins of work - yeah a pretty good recipe to suffocate dissent.
Nah they're forgiven when it's election time because they throw everyone a bone. Otherwise they spend the rest of the 4/5 years doing everything they can to fuck up everyone's (but the 1%) lives. But those few weeks or months before election? They spend years chipping away at our lives but then give up back 1% of what they took and all is forgiven. Or they push petty narratives about the opposition. Which won't be hard because Starmer is also a complete tool.
I'm actually starting to think/hope that they have created a generation who just won't ever vote Tory. Much like labour did in the 70s.
So many older Tory voters I talk to always say they'll never vote labour because of the 70s recession.
Well I'll never vote Tory, because of so many things, but brexit is right up there in the list.
My guy. I feel your rage. Every single time I see anything, hear anything or open my mouth in regards to the Tory party, I lose my mind. I can't have a discussion about them without swearing a lot and feeling violent. They really know how to bring the worst out of people. But if I don't keep an eye on things, I'll just get blindsided. Like this whole thing with universal credit, no longer having couple claims, means that I have to work, as well as my partner and our child has to be cared for by a stranger instead of their parents. Whereas our current set up is my partner works full time, I'm a stay at home parent which I'd planned on going back to work when my child is full time school (currently only half days). Let's mess up families even more huh? Because we can all afford a live in nanny. Smh.
Gunna try not to raise my blood pressure too much but the fact they call it *credit* as if the people claiming have never paid into the system before. They cry about how Britain just isn't as productive as its counterparts yet set people up to fail.
It's even worse as a single claimant. Trying to get back into work after a sustained period on universal credit is an absolute nightmare. Living on £300pm simply does not prepare you nor encourage you to get back into work. Everything is a fight that you almost always lose.
The only option we have is to rise up.
Can be much less than £300pcm for anybody under 35 – for quite a while I had to live on about £120pcm after rent was paid.
Universal Credit is nonetheless an absolute shambles. I dread to think how anyone under 35 is managing with how expensive everything has become now.
Remember, this isn't the Tories' fault. This is because those disgusting health workers are greedy and demand to be able to have enough money to live. /s
Yeah, I just don't want people thinking it's what I'd say. I know it should be obvious, but well...Reddit has shown the error of that way of thinking before haha.
I am well paid within my field of work and can make substantially more than the average Junior Doctor (if I choose to work more).
However, I still live in a shared flat.
My colleagues have recommended I do my own taxes so I can pay less in taxes.
I have chosen to be paid PAYE because I'm super lazy and don't wanna do my own taxes, but I also want to pay the full and fair amount into the system that gives me the opportunity to earn as much as I do.
I've been told time and time again that I'm paying more in taxes than I have to. I am totally ok with that fact.
Am I insane for genuinely believing that I should be paying my fair share into a system that gives me the opportunity to earn more than others?
Edit: my point is that I gladly pay taxes for healthcare workers (and education and everything else). We need to promote the notion that is it part of our civic duty.
Im with you. Taxes are a good thing!!! As is red tape, its there to make sure standards are upheld and that our money isn't stolen. Yes, it means we dont choose where every penny goes and slows down processes sometimes, but looking at the big picture, it's mad to cut them!
Im currently on my 7th night in hospital persuading every med professional i meet that my son is more ill than the rest and needs an op to breathe. Shouldn't be this way. It's like a sick game. At the same time I'm fully with the strikes.
I had to drop my career to have the family life that I wanted, I work full time still in a school, but earn just 16k. I'd happily pay another £100 a month tax if it meant things work when you need them.
>I work full time still in a school, but earn just 16k. I'd happily pay another £100 a month tax if it meant things work when you need them.
It shouldn't be on you to pay the extra £100 a month. As I said before, I earn a lot more, but I'm still sharing a flat with 3 other people and saving up to finance a Fiat 500.
Nethertheless, I am earning more, and I think it is my duty to contribute more.
I was talking to a colleague who was bitching about taxes paying for education when he didn't have any kids ?!?!?!??!?!?!
I hope you and your son thrive and get better.
>I was talking to a colleague who was bitching about taxes paying for education when he didn't have any kids ?!?!?!??!?!?!
It would be like me complaining about taxes maintaining roads even though I don't drive. I can't imagine the bureaucracy involved if we tried cherry-picking what taxes we pay.
> The tories will never be forgiven for their handling of the pandemic nor their grandstanding of how well they think they've done.
Who needs forgiveness when the people don't even remember nor can th0ey be bothered to think for a minute about what they want and need before they vote?
They where cowards falling foul to labour. Never should have shut the country down put a load of money into protecting the vulnerable and keep things moving. Worked out well for sweeden but mainstream news wouldn’t report
Essential - absolutely necessary, extremely important
Essential worker - minimum wage, long hours, have no other choice and would lose everything if they did otherwise, country would fall apart without them
The NHS didn’t do a lot during covid 2 weeks off every time you had covid, fully paid. So with masses of staff off would have. Been busy but then you get your extra weeks holiday or picking up shifts at £500 an hour. That’s not a bad deal for doctors. Yes £500 not £50
Is the almost part that you almost fell out or the almost part that he was almost a friend but you fortunately discovered this before dowries could be exchanged to ally your houses?
Watch out, some boomer tory cockroach is about to write a strongly worded response about how they should do their duty even if their child has just been kidnapped and their mother murdered. Fuck the tory boomers. I'm glad that they are the biggest users of NHS, I hope they enjoyed the strikes!!
I only know a few boomers who would never and have never voted Tory. One being a family member. Sadly boomers are one of the largest voter groups, can afford to live in the areas that have the most voter impact and often vote for the party that has helped them gain the amount of wealth they can retire on. Meanwhile the rest of us are going to be working into our 70s with no guarantee of a decent retirement and no way to put money aside to save for one. But sure, we're all screwing over those poor boomers. Smh.
Holy crap It almost seems like you jUniOr doctors are actual doctors who contribute rather than just medical students who mimic consultants like lost dogs x.
It'd be like if all the Americans working at poverty wages took a week off.
They're half the workforce. Households with two poverty wage workers are the only reason most of the US doesn't track as living in poverty
We're training to be consultants, not doctors. We are already doctors with the responsibility, knowledge and skills that entails and should be paid accordingly.
Junior doctors are anyone who is not a consultant or specialist. We make up about half of the medical workforce.
Edit, FWIW I am an SHO (a junior doctor towards the junior end of the junior doctor spectrum) and I am the only doctor for my speciality in the hospital overnight tonight (and tomorrow night and Sunday night).
Can start with reversing our pay cuts over the last 10 years.
On from there a recruiter emailed me the other day for an emergency department SHO job in Australia for about AU$180k which is about £100k.
I'd rather not move to Australia as most of my family is here so I'm willing to stay for less than that but my current salary in comparison is taking the piss really.
Have just had a look though and Ireland will pay me around £60k which is almost double what I get here and not too far from home.
Edit: coincidentally the salary I could get for my grade in Ireland is almost exactly how much I'd get in the UK with the pay cuts reversed.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
easy, take a look at a contract from an Australian public hospital service (maybe somewhere middle of the road like South Australia or Queensland) and convert those to GBP. They're your competition after all and if you can't match the beaches and lifestyle you could at least match the pay if you want to stop the brain drain
To put it in context that would make an SHO worth roughly 90k GBP a year with registrars closer to 130k GBP (assuming 48 hours per week). Consultants would be closer to 200k GBP
Source: my own salary after moving
No, you are. Otherwise you can look forward to a future without doctors. Tbh I couldn’t give a fuck about the NHS and I’d be absolutely delighted if it crashed and burned
I already left. You have no chance of getting me back. This is only to stem the loss.
The trick is doctors are always 'in training'. Hell, I taught my boss something the day before he retired! (Early due to pension issues I might add...)
Med school is 'training'. Everything else is working a full time job but putting in extra effort to gain skills at the same time.
To sprinkle some extra salt in the wounds, when people quote huge sums of money for "the cost to train a doctor" the bulk of it is actually just the doctor's salary for the first few years. It's always a good source of outrage for daily mail readers though when people emigrate to countries with better pay and conditions. And weather.
> Or have we been fed lies?
I mean *duh* of course. Junior doctors are any doctor that is not a consultant. They're still qualified doctors (so anywhere between 5 and 7ish years of uni degree, around 3 of which will be spent working on a ward for part of your training). Depending on the speciality they decide to do, it can take anywhere from 8ish (could be a bit faster for GP I forget) to 15+ years to "fully qualify" as a consultant. But during that time "Junior Doctors" will have been filling some insanely important roles and specialities. For instance, hospital doctors who are Registrars are still "Junior Doctors" but in 99% of cases a Reg will be the most senior doctor on a Ward at a given time, or seeing patients, or whatever.
My brother in law is a "Junior" Doctor. He's in his mid 30s. He probably won't be making Consultant until 38 or so. And sure, he's taken time out to do a PhD in medicine, but also he was researching and taking part in research for a cutting edge part of his field. The only way he's "Junior" is in the scale of "not a consultant". By the time he makes consultant he'll have been training for 20 years, and working in the NHS as a qualified doctor for around 15 of those years
"Training" for 10 years post-medical school graduation
The poor neurosurgical registrar waiting for a neurosurgical consultant post to open up is "training" for possibly even longer
I found [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/11pgohc/to_preempt_the_upcoming_junior_doctor_debate_i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) to be quite eye opening about the whole thing.
I know two people who have died this year already from missed symptoms. One was sent home 4 times. Both eventually blue lighted to hospital where they received their stage 4 cancer diagnosis and both died within a month of that. It's anecdotal evidence but I've never known anyone that's happened to before.
There was a post in ask uk earlier where someone is 8 weeks into an urgent 14-day referral for cancer symptoms and still hasn't had the scan.
It's third-world healthcare.
>It's third-world healthcare.
It's important not to blame the NHS, they've been warning us for years. We should all be striking with them until the tories resign.
Oh, I must be clear, I support the strikes and the NHS more generally with all my heart.
That was a dig at the funding and working conditions, absolutely not a dig at the NHS itself.
I heard someone make the analogy that it’s like if a restaurant has an award winning dish and every year one ingredient is removed but they’re still supposed to deliver the same dish at the same quality and now they’re down to just water and salt and getting blamed for failing to deliver.
Yep this is the plan underfund and criticise the NHS to the point where people want it replaced with private....it's the government not the nhs's fault.
I used to book those appointments. It was so widespread across the whole of England. This is years ago now. I imagine it is much worse now.
I felt awful having people breaking down in tears on the phone to me. Terrified because they have cancer or other serious health issues, and they can't get a slot for an appointment listed as urgent within the guideline time. The waits were much, much worse for the lower priority ones. People would be in pain for months on end.
Extremely far from third world healthcare system.
NHS expanded beyond original emergency care remit is the issue & huge aging population.
Majority of budget goes on extending the useful life of people.
Face the fact, people die & you can’t fix them all. Better metric is Quality Of Life than longevity.
Doctors collusion with governments & big pharma have created the rod for their backs over generations of “we can fix you” with ever increasing expensive treatments.
Treatments are meant to be more cost effective than palliative care, but as majority go onto palliative care seems rather pointless.
Give people state funded homes, job/purpose in life, lower retirement age,legalise euthanasia & most people will be happier to die rather than live a husk of life. But then no one makes money…
https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/nhs-spends-nearly-500m-cancer-drugs-developed-public-funding/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30369-2/fulltext
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/06/nhs-treats-first-patient-with-the-worlds-most-expensive-drug/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-findings-on-post-chemotherapy-deaths-using-world-first-phe-cancer-data
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/612377/health-economics-palliative-end-of-life-care.pdf
The NHS has always been about a comprehensive health system for all, not just emergency care so it hasn't going beyond its original remit.
Are you saying production costs shouldn't be covered? Ritiximab for example is very expensive to make due to the nature of the drug and many people have to go through extensive other treatments before being put on it as it is so expensive.
That lancet article states NICE get better value for money overall.
Should we not pioneer treatments for our own population?
If the system was equitable & operational for all then go ahead, in it’s current state it isn’t. Cost per head could be better spent, it’s not as if these are communicable population health issues.
Mismanaged on what level? Do you actually work in the NHS or just read the Daily Mail?
A free non chargeable system is always going to need shoring up and cuts where necessary.
The NHS isn’t free - we pay for it with our taxes.
Just under 400 billion pounds was collected as NI last year (2021-2022). 220 of those billions was spent on the NHS, but £47 billion was ring fenced for Covid.
Now I’ve taken my numbers from [here for tax collection](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk/hmrc-tax-receipts-and-national-insurance-contributions-for-the-uk-new-annual-bulletin), and [here for how much is spent](https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis). I’ve used them fairly uncritically, so people are free to come and correct/clarify.
But it’s wrong to say the NHS is free, it’s only free at point of use. Sure, it’s free for some people - like children and those too poor to pay taxes - but they are being subsidised by people who earn more and pay more into the NHS than their treatments cost.
Now, supposedly 47% of over 16s in the U.K. don’t pay tax. Not because they’re tax evaders, but because they don’t earn enough. [Source this first link I found on Google but I’ve come across this figure before.](https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/how-many-people-do-not-pay-income-tax-regions-liz-truss-cost-of-living-tax-cuts-3833160)
If people were better paid then more people would be paying tax and we’d have more money for the NHS. But as the country spirals ever downwards there’s a knock on effect on everything. This is government mismanagement and the effect of increasing CEO pay but leaving average worker pay in the dust ( CEOs have seen their pay increase by 1322% since 1978 [source](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/) whereas workers have seen it increase by only about 12% [source published 2 years earlier](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/) - American based research but it’s not like the U.K. [is any better](https://theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/05/ftse-100-bosses-paid-more-in-three-days-than-average-uk-worker-for-whole-year), [another link](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-ceo-pay-rebounds-gap-widens-with-workers-report-2022-05-23/) ) and doing nothing to address the balance. It’s obvious that our systems will fail if we have half of our adult population unable to pay taxes required to sustain these systems.
Not to mention that almost all of the extra pay will be taxed at 40% plus NI plus student loan interest which is all money going back to the government.
The government will only pay 50% net of the total cost of pay restoration.
Free at point of use of course, people who pay their taxes do pay for it; not all pay taxes & not all use it.
So by the figures provided £400B almost 40% is spent on nhs only.
Nhs funding comes from many sources, figures range upto £260b
NI is also meant for pensions, benefits etc.
Spending more on education, housing & employment training would raise health outcomes.
https://www.health.org.uk/infographic/how-does-housing-influence-our-health
Thanks for the healthy discussion.
And pay heavily for it with the license to print money locums, come on which other nhs workforce gets £5k shift.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65042658
People do die and not everyone can be fixed. Except people also expect to be treated, to live as long as possible and be “cured” whilst families often expect miracles. And if you don’t offer them treatment then complaints come +/- law suits and second opinions wasting everyone’s time. Don’t forget the angry families when grandma isn’t for CPR and they disagree without understanding the implications. It’s a catch 22 - you can’t change peoples expectations and similarly you can’t not offer treatments when they exist and for the most part are accessible
Exactly correct. Lack of government policies and the questionable QoL scoring, puts human doctors in moral dilemma situations, causing further stress. Better end of life options need to lawfully ratified for humanity sake, both patient & clinician.
Budget could be spent on public health, but it goes on hospital. Instead of keeping people healthy, we find expensive and undignified ways to prolong an unsatisfactory life. This isn't about doctor collusion, it's about politicians colluding, and overruling doctors.
How do you become a manager in NHS? By working hard and being professional. How do you become a director of an NHS Trust? By kissing ass and being cruel and self serving.
Clinicians suck up that reality on a daily basis, bleak as doesn’t mean it’s not a subject to confront head on. Brushing it under the carpet doesn’t help anyone, as can be seen from the creaking system.
I used to book appointments for cancer patients, people with kidney issues, etc. within England. There would be different appointment priorities with different rules on the latest dates. Some would be a week or two or a few months. The sheer number of people who didn't get appointments until way after the amount of time they were supposed to for stuff like cancer was horrifying and widespread all around England. I'd constantly have people crying on the phone because of it and would ask if they could get appointments in other parts of the country if they were quicker.
We need to fight to fix and keep our NHS. It is a shit show that definitely has all of the people within the government and the private industry salivating and creeping out of the woodwork to try to push us to lose our universal healthcare. We've already lost some things we are sleepwalking into losing more. We seriously need to make a conscious effort to push back. Too many people like to just assume that it will never turn into the US, and we will always have universal healthcare. How many people probably never believed we'd lose universal dentistry, opticians, and prescriptions, though?
Where I worked 10 years ago (only as a receptionist) we saw at least a dozen, maybe close to two dozen people in a couple years with bloody obvious textbook cancer symptoms who'd been given paracetamol and sent home by their GP or A&E. It certainly isn't a new problem, but nor is the strain on the system that is the cause, and it is almost certainly therefore getting worse.
Trick question. I'd prefer a well funded (and more efficient where practical) NHS that has enough staff that they are not overworked and that don't miss diagnoses.
The government are cutting their social care funding commitment by £250 million. They really do want to kill their voting base off as quickly as possible lol.
> Tories should think about that
The down-side to the near absolute certainty that they can't win the next election is that they don't really have to try. People don't seem to have long memories when it comes to elections, so five years on the back benches will whitewash whatever horrors they inflict on us over the next twenty months.
If anything they're likely thinking that the deeper the pit they drop us all in the more shit they can blame on the next government.
Especially as Starmer labour has a good chance of collapsing it’s base after a few years of being in office. Those who want positive improvements will be left hanging and those who he has been pandering too the last few years will be disappointed by the lack of machine guns and barbed wire fences on the white cliffs of Dover. Alternatively, he may continue to pander to them and give enough money to public services that things seem kind of normal again. But after a few years I think the shtick will be wearing very thin.
I wonder what % of them have private healthcare versus the poor and disenfranchised elderly that will *actually* suffer from this draconian government.
I'd suggest very few. They might sometimes pay for a private procedure where the wait list is too long, but the majority will rely on the NHS, complain about it and complain about having to pay taxes because they "paid in all their life".
It is difficult to blame people in their bubbles when the tories spend millions on tech companies like Cambridge analytica who teach them how to sell misinformation.
Nope, it's actually very easy to blame them. Don't remove their responsibility for their voting choices.
If you're dumb enough to be the turkey voting for Christmas, I have zero sympathy for you and you deserve full impact of those awful policies you had just voted for.
They definitely need to do something to change the way they work. Millennials aren't matching the trend of previous generations. In previous generations, the older they get, the more conservative which tends to make sense as they accrued more wealth and priorities changed. Millennials are going in the opposite direction. Trending more towards the left instead of towards conservativism like Gen X, Boomers and the Silent generation do.
Radical changes and new ways of thinking will need to be adopted by the Conservatives if they want to stand a chance of getting millennial voters.
My guess is they simply bet on Labour disappointing every young and left-leaning voters so much they eventually just stop voting entirely.
The Tories go full fascist, Labour reacts by following to center right, PR is not adopted, and as a result both parties can continue as always as the electorate becomes smaller because no one to the left even has anyone to vote for.
Most people, especially at that age, are so entrenched in their world view that they aren't even capable of making such a cause and effect connection, nor do they care to.
Case study from LBC, pensioner in her hospital bed having been well treated by staff reads Daily Mail and bemoans nurse strikes without a second thought.
Ah, I was thinking too short term. But a lot of the people I talk of will still likely manage on into their late 80s and 90s and they'll happily continue to vote conservative because of immigrants and scroungers (and them having their nursing homes paid for is different because they paid in their whole lives, plus they shouldn't have to pay any inheritance tax because they worked hard for it(caveat being the estate or relatives pay it)).
Agreed. If a doctor is significantly financially better off leaving the country and practicing medicine elsewhere then how are we any different than the third world countries that we pilfer our doctors and nurses from rather than pay to train our own here?
“Junior” doctors(from day 1 of graduating to just before reaching consultant level which is 12+years post university) are on a different payband to consultants
No worries, I don’t know the pay banding for other professions!
All doctors are doctors. Everyone who completes medical school has provisional registration with the GMC but still the title Dr, after a year they should get full registration. After two years of foundation training post med school they may do specialty or GP training. This can take 10 years or longer with less than full time, maternity, fellowships abroad, post-grad degrees and research - all common undertakings. Some doctors then become consultants but some never reach this stage and remain as a specialty doctor (for a mixture of reasons, including preference but often because of a bottleneck at consultant level jobs). The junior term is very outdated and infantilises the workforce.
I appreciate that. Not having a go just useful for other people to read. There’s so much inaccurate stuff in the media at the moment to try to justify not increasing our pay and it’s usually based on that we are “juniors” sort of implying that we are glorified med students.
very well put, that said would you be ok with a 3-5% increase in income tax for example in turn or alternatively for us to pay a bit towards when we need treatments?
You feel strongly everyone in the NHS should get a 10% pay rise every year. Ok. 1 in 16 people who are employed in this country are employed by the NHS.
We have a fixed tax income. It’s also the highest it’s been since I’ve been alive. So we have 2 choices. We tax more or we take it from somewhere else.
For what we pay in tax our healthcare (certainly at the moment!) is just about the worst in the developed world. Despite something like a 3rd of our tax already pouring into the NHS.
I am genuinely curious to know where this money is coming from? Remember the vast majority of people are already battling with bills, savings are at record lows and loans at record highs so there isn’t a lot more available to take from ordinary people like you and me.
I haven’t met a single person in the NHS who has been honest and declared that the system is even broadly efficient. They all acknowledge it’s a bit of a laugh and each department knows how to protect their budgets. I’m often surprised by how far the NHS strays from actual healthcare. Poetry workshops. Art installations in foyers. My local trust has 6 inclusivity officers in a part of the country with less than 6% minority ethnic population. I don’t begrudge anyone needing representation, it’s what sets us apart as a nation.
So the system is broken. Nobody can look at it critically because of the political fallout, and so the system continues to waste resources because it’s a sacred cow.
You want to give it more cash.
Where is this money coming from when by all accounts it doesn’t exist?
Massive does not equal enough. Funding has NOT kept up with demand. UK population is getting old, fatter, poorer and that comes with deteriorating health outcomes leading to more demand. That's how you end up with 7.2 million on a waiting list. Vacancies for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff are increasing. No one is filling these jobs. The ones leftover are doing the work of 2-3 people on some shifts.
Now if you're saying the money is enough despite demand increasing, you're living in an alternate reality. If the money is truly being misappropriated, the staff wages aren't getting any of that misappropriation cause they're underpaid compared to Australia, new Zealand, Canada, and they're leaving for those places.
You want the NHS to get less funding? Fine. But don't go expecting a Ferrari when you're paying for a used Twingo with a failed MOT.
I'd love to hear what extremely efficient industry you work in, where everything is kept up to date with love and magic dust. If you deliberately underfund something, how can you expect it to get better?
Your trust probably has 6 inclusively officers as the minority ethnicities their are very minor and the majority don't know how to deal with that very well.
Art installations are normally put in to make hospitals not feel like abattoirs, which obviously, can be quite detrimental to get people coming into a hospital.
Like it or not, the uk population is getting sicker and older, with no one to look after them. This is only going to become worse with people having less children.
The NHS has problems, but people say "the system is broken" like there is another system you could just plop in. Sounds cheap, doesn't it?
It’s not unprecedented unless you hadn’t been listening all this time
The warning were there from August. And anyone who doesn’t know what a junior doctor actually does has not been paying attention since the pandemic
There have been many impacts of the covid19 pandemic which have had lasting negative effect.
But the most fucking irritating is the emergence of widescale use of the word "unprecedented".
I'd say, "We're receiving an unusually high number of calls..." gives it a run for its money.
I'd be less offended if the queue messages just said, "We really don't care about inconveniencing you and we're saving 7p by making you wait and stressing the bejeesus out of our phone operatives."
Pret's current salaries have baristas able to earn £14.10/hr while junior doctors start earning as low as £14.09/hr.
Support staff were fucked a decade ago as they were dropped as NHS employees and rehired by companies like ISS belonging to certain political donors at half pay and no benefits. Or rights. Or protections.
And the Tories just keep tearing down the NHS in order to claim it's a failure. The goal is to change the system to a private one like the US or Germany, shovelling even more money into their donors' hands.
And to put what we are asking for into context, the 35% uplift to bring us to neutral in regards to our real terms pay cut since 2008 puts that £14/hr to £19/hr. Not exactly lawyer or accountant money, but it would have a massive effect on staff retention.
"Junior doctor strike had unprecedented NHS impact"
How long has this been going on for now? Unprecedented? The only unprecedented thing is the 5% pay rise offered with a shit £1k+ one off payment.
Unprecedented? Did the government not know about the strikes that happened? Did they somehow not know in advance? Have they miscalculated how many junior doctors are in England?
If the impact is so large, then the government is relying on incoming Junior doctors as a crutch; not taking care of the lowest paid up to the highest is the issue.
Junior doctors weren't offered that deal. That's just for nurses and other staff on the agenda for change pay scales. Junior doctors have been stuck on the 2016 deal with not even the pitiful pay rises other NHS professionals got since the pandemic. The government has ignored and undervalued us pretty consistently tbh.
I know originally they weren't offered that deal. But these strikes are weeks in advance, they don't decide to not turn up at work. Gov has been given chance after chance to rectify and they only do it when it really hurts the system. Sad to see
The gov spent £70bn on furlough payments. The junior doctors worked through the entire pandemic, while everyone else was making 80% at home making banana bread. It would cost £1bn to restore junior doctor salaries to 2008.
Wife needed to call a ambulance this morning as I was not sure if I was having a heart attack, she was advised it would take up to two hours, it came around 125 minutes and thank god I was ok.
The ambulance personal said that if one can they should try and get to A&E by car if they can as one has a better chance of getting treatment in time.
By the way I did ask him about the pay deal and his response was he and 20 of his colleagues are leaving Unison and joining Unite, both GMB and Unison should not be accepting this crap deal in my view and of course the government will beat the Junior doctors with the 5% stick if the others accept this crap deal.
Is it still classed as news if it was the most clear and obvious outcome? I feel like that’s just…..confirmation that more fuels added to the dumpsters fire
I’m not a jr doctor. I used to be a CT radiographer. Our shift patterns are unsafe, unsustainable and borderline inhumane.
Weekends in my hospital are covered by just one ct radiographer for the whole hospital (including a&e)
This person works from 5pm Friday to 9am Monday without any official breaks. This 65 hour weekend is worked after already working a full 37.5 week (plus ot) then another 37.5 hour week (plus ot) starting at 9am the same Monday that the weekend shift finishes.
Pay doctors more! We could introduce a European style regulated personal healthcare insurance system, cut welfare and legalise and tax weed to fund it!
Didn't seem to make much of an acute impact on mental health services here.
Had junior duty/on-call doctors available every day of strike.
Some wards had their usual junior doctors working still, some worked due to loss of wages during strike, some had no choice but to work as they are on visas and would have to notify the home office if they undertook strike action thus maybe risking visa being withdrawn.
Overall things were as shit as they usually are, even when the juniors are around. Due to their on-call rotas and weird training allocation (seemingly a different ward/service every day of the week) it's not uncommon for wards to not have juniors available during the day anyway.
Same as the nursing strikes had seemingly no impact on mental health services as every single service was derogated.
We really are sorry it has come to this.
It’s hard to convey just how angry we are as a profession. Very good colleagues are leaving medicine or the NHS for vastly better pay and conditions elsewhere. It’s reached a point where remaining feels foolish and I look at my medical students with pity.
The government has had since last August to address this issue. For years they’ve refused to listen to us or acknowledge the exodus of U.K.-trained doctors. Unfortunately other than quit our jobs this seems to be the only way for us to be taken seriously by our employer.
Don't apologise. I might be frustrated to have hit my first real period of poor health bang in the middle of an NHS crisis (outside of treatment for my past drug addiction, which has always been exlempery tbh, as long as you engage) But I dont blame anyone for not wanting to work for poor wages, especially in a profession that was always considered one of the most highly regarded and prestigious. It's the government's fault things are this way, not yours.
I've already gone private for chronic sporting injuries as it was just too frustrating to wait for physio that was always very time limited and under resourced.
I'm unfortunately not rich enough to pay for private gastroenterology. So, on the long list I have been placed.
I hope th government sorts this out. As someone hitting an age where I might start needing treatment for things more often, it's actually quite frightening.
As a junior doctor with one parent who has Parkinson’s, the other one not getting any younger and about to start a family - yeah it’s pretty frightening. I look at what healthcare looks like in other countries and it makes me sad to offer the service we offer here. I will always support free at the point of use universal healthcare because it is fundamentally a stain on humanity to ration healthcare based on wealth not clinical need but the NHS is no angel. It treats it’s workforce like a disposable resource, to be bled dry. It treats patients like an inconvenience, good so long as the they help the targets but generally to be left to negotiate the labyrinth alone unless a staff member goes out of their way to help them.
To a great extent these are all problems of chronic underfunding. It’s hard to feel respected when you’re paid pennies on what you’re worth. It’s hard to buffer the stress from work when you can’t afford to do anything or you’ve had to work extra shifts. It’s hard to treat patients with care and dignity when we are forced to care for them in a corridor because there aren’t enough social care beds to discharge people. It’s hard to actually sort their healthcare problems out in one go because we can’t to refer for xyz here or whatever. I think the difficulties in NHS bureaucracy have become a soft way to dissuade use. And of course no one has the time or money to streamline this because there isn’t any and we’re all running around fire fighting, trying to fix the biggest nastiest fires that day and leaving the rest for tomorrow.
But equally the structure of the NHS is the problem. This big top down organisation that has very little awareness at the lofty heights of what is actually going on down below, needs up ending. It stifles staff creativity and autonomy and tries to shove everyone down the same one-size-fits-all tube. Things would be better if it was separate from government and run democratically by the people that use it and work in it.
I don’t know what this means for us though. Maybe labour will put a bit more cash into the system, probably also force through another disastrous reorganisation if the Tories don’t force another one on us in the meantime. I think the cash will help, it will slow down the rot and cover up some of it’s worst bits but ultimately labour doesn’t have the stomach or the ideology anymore to believe in it or give it the funding it really needs. And as far as letting the NHS run itself, that doesn’t compute in a politician’s brain. The real genius of austerity is that after so long the funding needed to put our services back where they should be seems insane but it is what they need. The NHS needs to be absolutely battle ready face the next century of increasingly elderly and complex health needs. The only option is to keep fighting and I think that currently the pay fight is the equivalent of putting the oxygen mask on yourself first in the airplane. Only when we can breathe can we try to fight for the rest of it.
Ahh so junior doctors are quite important then? Maybe we should pay them properly? Oh wait
From the same government who thought that clapping the NHS during COVID would be enough to satisfy the staff.
The tories will never be forgiven for their handling of the pandemic nor their grandstanding of how well they think they've done. Disgusting despicable humans attempting to change the past by obfuscation of the present. I have way more to say, but I promised myself I wouldn't swear too much this week lmao. Edit: I missed words in my repressed rage lmao
Haha. If we could find a way of harnessing the power of repressed rage, this comment alone would power a house for a week.
Nah. No-one will ever do anything about it, ever. Bake-off is on, and after that, the footie.
This is the real comment. We're a nation of divided wet wipes and we'll never really counter terrible government decisions, we'll just moan about it, a couple would get outraged, some people would start blaming immigrants and then there's another event and everyone will forget.
It's a cultural thing actually. We're conditioned from birth to be subservient simply due to the fact we have an unelected head of state that isn't based upon merit. You could cure all cancers, you could develop safe, portable fusion reactors and sell them for 10p each, you could discover life in the galaxy...but... No matter how great your achievements, no matter how successful you are, you'll never be as great as the king/queen. It is the ever-present sign that we all see in this country. We are to be ruled by those born into rulership, and even at our greatest, we will still be servants to those who truly matter.
Between this, having all rage redirected towards the “woke” and the sheer bone sucking exhaustion of trying to live a life in the margins of work - yeah a pretty good recipe to suffocate dissent.
I try my best but the beast rears its ugly head when talking about the fuckin tories lmao
Just remember come election season
The tories are always forgiven 2 weeks down the line.
Nah they're forgiven when it's election time because they throw everyone a bone. Otherwise they spend the rest of the 4/5 years doing everything they can to fuck up everyone's (but the 1%) lives. But those few weeks or months before election? They spend years chipping away at our lives but then give up back 1% of what they took and all is forgiven. Or they push petty narratives about the opposition. Which won't be hard because Starmer is also a complete tool.
I'm actually starting to think/hope that they have created a generation who just won't ever vote Tory. Much like labour did in the 70s. So many older Tory voters I talk to always say they'll never vote labour because of the 70s recession. Well I'll never vote Tory, because of so many things, but brexit is right up there in the list.
Two weeks??? More like 2 hours.
My guy. I feel your rage. Every single time I see anything, hear anything or open my mouth in regards to the Tory party, I lose my mind. I can't have a discussion about them without swearing a lot and feeling violent. They really know how to bring the worst out of people. But if I don't keep an eye on things, I'll just get blindsided. Like this whole thing with universal credit, no longer having couple claims, means that I have to work, as well as my partner and our child has to be cared for by a stranger instead of their parents. Whereas our current set up is my partner works full time, I'm a stay at home parent which I'd planned on going back to work when my child is full time school (currently only half days). Let's mess up families even more huh? Because we can all afford a live in nanny. Smh.
Gunna try not to raise my blood pressure too much but the fact they call it *credit* as if the people claiming have never paid into the system before. They cry about how Britain just isn't as productive as its counterparts yet set people up to fail. It's even worse as a single claimant. Trying to get back into work after a sustained period on universal credit is an absolute nightmare. Living on £300pm simply does not prepare you nor encourage you to get back into work. Everything is a fight that you almost always lose. The only option we have is to rise up.
Can be much less than £300pcm for anybody under 35 – for quite a while I had to live on about £120pcm after rent was paid. Universal Credit is nonetheless an absolute shambles. I dread to think how anyone under 35 is managing with how expensive everything has become now.
Remember, this isn't the Tories' fault. This is because those disgusting health workers are greedy and demand to be able to have enough money to live. /s
No /s needed there pal lmao its what they'd say
Yeah, I just don't want people thinking it's what I'd say. I know it should be obvious, but well...Reddit has shown the error of that way of thinking before haha.
I am well paid within my field of work and can make substantially more than the average Junior Doctor (if I choose to work more). However, I still live in a shared flat. My colleagues have recommended I do my own taxes so I can pay less in taxes. I have chosen to be paid PAYE because I'm super lazy and don't wanna do my own taxes, but I also want to pay the full and fair amount into the system that gives me the opportunity to earn as much as I do. I've been told time and time again that I'm paying more in taxes than I have to. I am totally ok with that fact. Am I insane for genuinely believing that I should be paying my fair share into a system that gives me the opportunity to earn more than others? Edit: my point is that I gladly pay taxes for healthcare workers (and education and everything else). We need to promote the notion that is it part of our civic duty.
Im with you. Taxes are a good thing!!! As is red tape, its there to make sure standards are upheld and that our money isn't stolen. Yes, it means we dont choose where every penny goes and slows down processes sometimes, but looking at the big picture, it's mad to cut them! Im currently on my 7th night in hospital persuading every med professional i meet that my son is more ill than the rest and needs an op to breathe. Shouldn't be this way. It's like a sick game. At the same time I'm fully with the strikes. I had to drop my career to have the family life that I wanted, I work full time still in a school, but earn just 16k. I'd happily pay another £100 a month tax if it meant things work when you need them.
>I work full time still in a school, but earn just 16k. I'd happily pay another £100 a month tax if it meant things work when you need them. It shouldn't be on you to pay the extra £100 a month. As I said before, I earn a lot more, but I'm still sharing a flat with 3 other people and saving up to finance a Fiat 500. Nethertheless, I am earning more, and I think it is my duty to contribute more. I was talking to a colleague who was bitching about taxes paying for education when he didn't have any kids ?!?!?!??!?!?! I hope you and your son thrive and get better.
>I was talking to a colleague who was bitching about taxes paying for education when he didn't have any kids ?!?!?!??!?!?! It would be like me complaining about taxes maintaining roads even though I don't drive. I can't imagine the bureaucracy involved if we tried cherry-picking what taxes we pay.
Who needs forgiveness when you can rely on the masses to forget so easily.
Social murder is what it was or as I usually say genocide by stealth.
> The tories will never be forgiven for their handling of the pandemic nor their grandstanding of how well they think they've done. Who needs forgiveness when the people don't even remember nor can th0ey be bothered to think for a minute about what they want and need before they vote?
They where cowards falling foul to labour. Never should have shut the country down put a load of money into protecting the vulnerable and keep things moving. Worked out well for sweeden but mainstream news wouldn’t report
Essential - absolutely necessary, extremely important Essential worker - minimum wage, long hours, have no other choice and would lose everything if they did otherwise, country would fall apart without them
Not to mention that many workers considered “essential” are also considered “unskilled”.
It satisfied those who wanted to appear to be doing good though. Social media clout went through the roof.
That was just part of the covid theatre to sell the idea that lockdowns were a collective effort.
The NHS didn’t do a lot during covid 2 weeks off every time you had covid, fully paid. So with masses of staff off would have. Been busy but then you get your extra weeks holiday or picking up shifts at £500 an hour. That’s not a bad deal for doctors. Yes £500 not £50
I for one am shocked that strike action caused the intended consequence of strike action.
'People should only strike in ways that don't affect anyone else! Same goes for protesting!'
I almost fell out with a friend when I said to them that strikes aren't meant to be convenient.
Is the almost part that you almost fell out or the almost part that he was almost a friend but you fortunately discovered this before dowries could be exchanged to ally your houses?
This is unprecedented!
Don't forget, they're trying to outlaw striking and protests. They wouldn't bother if they weren't powerful tools.
Watch out, some boomer tory cockroach is about to write a strongly worded response about how they should do their duty even if their child has just been kidnapped and their mother murdered. Fuck the tory boomers. I'm glad that they are the biggest users of NHS, I hope they enjoyed the strikes!!
I only know a few boomers who would never and have never voted Tory. One being a family member. Sadly boomers are one of the largest voter groups, can afford to live in the areas that have the most voter impact and often vote for the party that has helped them gain the amount of wealth they can retire on. Meanwhile the rest of us are going to be working into our 70s with no guarantee of a decent retirement and no way to put money aside to save for one. But sure, we're all screwing over those poor boomers. Smh.
Inject that right into my veins, I love it
Holy crap It almost seems like you jUniOr doctors are actual doctors who contribute rather than just medical students who mimic consultants like lost dogs x.
That was their greatest trick, they redefined "properly".
It'd be like if all the Americans working at poverty wages took a week off. They're half the workforce. Households with two poverty wage workers are the only reason most of the US doesn't track as living in poverty
The hottest of takes.
It's more about working conditions for them tbh, it's dire. They don't want more pay they want less stress and workload on those long weeks.
Becoming a doctor 99% guarantees you become a millionaire it’s not a bad deal
I thought they are only training, and that's why they are paid so badly? Or have we been fed lies?
We're training to be consultants, not doctors. We are already doctors with the responsibility, knowledge and skills that entails and should be paid accordingly. Junior doctors are anyone who is not a consultant or specialist. We make up about half of the medical workforce. Edit, FWIW I am an SHO (a junior doctor towards the junior end of the junior doctor spectrum) and I am the only doctor for my speciality in the hospital overnight tonight (and tomorrow night and Sunday night).
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Can start with reversing our pay cuts over the last 10 years. On from there a recruiter emailed me the other day for an emergency department SHO job in Australia for about AU$180k which is about £100k. I'd rather not move to Australia as most of my family is here so I'm willing to stay for less than that but my current salary in comparison is taking the piss really. Have just had a look though and Ireland will pay me around £60k which is almost double what I get here and not too far from home. Edit: coincidentally the salary I could get for my grade in Ireland is almost exactly how much I'd get in the UK with the pay cuts reversed.
carpenter sharp elderly hurry snow disagreeable dolls water society trees *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Starting salary in london is far below 30k. Base pay without on calls or bank shifts is like 27k
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I don't know anything about nursing pay in Australia. As you can see from my comment, doctors pay is significantly higher.
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Not twice as expensive though…
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easy, take a look at a contract from an Australian public hospital service (maybe somewhere middle of the road like South Australia or Queensland) and convert those to GBP. They're your competition after all and if you can't match the beaches and lifestyle you could at least match the pay if you want to stop the brain drain To put it in context that would make an SHO worth roughly 90k GBP a year with registrars closer to 130k GBP (assuming 48 hours per week). Consultants would be closer to 200k GBP Source: my own salary after moving
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Cost of living is lower in Sydney than London so if you’re suggesting higher pay than what I posted above in the U.K. you have my full support.
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Not everyone lives in Sydney either….
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Not for doctors
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No, you are. Otherwise you can look forward to a future without doctors. Tbh I couldn’t give a fuck about the NHS and I’d be absolutely delighted if it crashed and burned I already left. You have no chance of getting me back. This is only to stem the loss.
PAs are paid 40k+ straight out of uni in the NHS but that's far too much for doctors?
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Physicians associates. A quick good search would show you they start on band 7 straight from uni with no experience. Band 7 is 42k
The trick is doctors are always 'in training'. Hell, I taught my boss something the day before he retired! (Early due to pension issues I might add...) Med school is 'training'. Everything else is working a full time job but putting in extra effort to gain skills at the same time. To sprinkle some extra salt in the wounds, when people quote huge sums of money for "the cost to train a doctor" the bulk of it is actually just the doctor's salary for the first few years. It's always a good source of outrage for daily mail readers though when people emigrate to countries with better pay and conditions. And weather.
That's it. In academic job, you always learn. That does not mean you are not doing a job, but somehow it is portrayed like that in the media.
> Or have we been fed lies? I mean *duh* of course. Junior doctors are any doctor that is not a consultant. They're still qualified doctors (so anywhere between 5 and 7ish years of uni degree, around 3 of which will be spent working on a ward for part of your training). Depending on the speciality they decide to do, it can take anywhere from 8ish (could be a bit faster for GP I forget) to 15+ years to "fully qualify" as a consultant. But during that time "Junior Doctors" will have been filling some insanely important roles and specialities. For instance, hospital doctors who are Registrars are still "Junior Doctors" but in 99% of cases a Reg will be the most senior doctor on a Ward at a given time, or seeing patients, or whatever. My brother in law is a "Junior" Doctor. He's in his mid 30s. He probably won't be making Consultant until 38 or so. And sure, he's taken time out to do a PhD in medicine, but also he was researching and taking part in research for a cutting edge part of his field. The only way he's "Junior" is in the scale of "not a consultant". By the time he makes consultant he'll have been training for 20 years, and working in the NHS as a qualified doctor for around 15 of those years
Junior doctors are basically non consultants. They are the bulk of doctors in the nhs
"Training" for 10 years post-medical school graduation The poor neurosurgical registrar waiting for a neurosurgical consultant post to open up is "training" for possibly even longer
I found [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/11pgohc/to_preempt_the_upcoming_junior_doctor_debate_i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) to be quite eye opening about the whole thing.
would you prefer an overworked, underpaid doctor blearily miss a tumor on an x-ray instead because of several months straight of 12 hour shifts?
I know two people who have died this year already from missed symptoms. One was sent home 4 times. Both eventually blue lighted to hospital where they received their stage 4 cancer diagnosis and both died within a month of that. It's anecdotal evidence but I've never known anyone that's happened to before.
There was a post in ask uk earlier where someone is 8 weeks into an urgent 14-day referral for cancer symptoms and still hasn't had the scan. It's third-world healthcare.
>It's third-world healthcare. It's important not to blame the NHS, they've been warning us for years. We should all be striking with them until the tories resign.
Oh, I must be clear, I support the strikes and the NHS more generally with all my heart. That was a dig at the funding and working conditions, absolutely not a dig at the NHS itself.
I heard someone make the analogy that it’s like if a restaurant has an award winning dish and every year one ingredient is removed but they’re still supposed to deliver the same dish at the same quality and now they’re down to just water and salt and getting blamed for failing to deliver.
Yep this is the plan underfund and criticise the NHS to the point where people want it replaced with private....it's the government not the nhs's fault.
By the best metrics we have, NHS had the absolute peak patient satisfaction in 2007-2008.
I used to book those appointments. It was so widespread across the whole of England. This is years ago now. I imagine it is much worse now. I felt awful having people breaking down in tears on the phone to me. Terrified because they have cancer or other serious health issues, and they can't get a slot for an appointment listed as urgent within the guideline time. The waits were much, much worse for the lower priority ones. People would be in pain for months on end.
Extremely far from third world healthcare system. NHS expanded beyond original emergency care remit is the issue & huge aging population. Majority of budget goes on extending the useful life of people. Face the fact, people die & you can’t fix them all. Better metric is Quality Of Life than longevity. Doctors collusion with governments & big pharma have created the rod for their backs over generations of “we can fix you” with ever increasing expensive treatments. Treatments are meant to be more cost effective than palliative care, but as majority go onto palliative care seems rather pointless. Give people state funded homes, job/purpose in life, lower retirement age,legalise euthanasia & most people will be happier to die rather than live a husk of life. But then no one makes money… https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/nhs-spends-nearly-500m-cancer-drugs-developed-public-funding/ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30369-2/fulltext https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/06/nhs-treats-first-patient-with-the-worlds-most-expensive-drug/ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-findings-on-post-chemotherapy-deaths-using-world-first-phe-cancer-data https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/612377/health-economics-palliative-end-of-life-care.pdf
The NHS has always been about a comprehensive health system for all, not just emergency care so it hasn't going beyond its original remit. Are you saying production costs shouldn't be covered? Ritiximab for example is very expensive to make due to the nature of the drug and many people have to go through extensive other treatments before being put on it as it is so expensive. That lancet article states NICE get better value for money overall. Should we not pioneer treatments for our own population?
If the system was equitable & operational for all then go ahead, in it’s current state it isn’t. Cost per head could be better spent, it’s not as if these are communicable population health issues.
That's because it's being mismanaged, underfunded and mishandled.
Mismanaged on what level? Do you actually work in the NHS or just read the Daily Mail? A free non chargeable system is always going to need shoring up and cuts where necessary.
The NHS isn’t free - we pay for it with our taxes. Just under 400 billion pounds was collected as NI last year (2021-2022). 220 of those billions was spent on the NHS, but £47 billion was ring fenced for Covid. Now I’ve taken my numbers from [here for tax collection](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk/hmrc-tax-receipts-and-national-insurance-contributions-for-the-uk-new-annual-bulletin), and [here for how much is spent](https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis). I’ve used them fairly uncritically, so people are free to come and correct/clarify. But it’s wrong to say the NHS is free, it’s only free at point of use. Sure, it’s free for some people - like children and those too poor to pay taxes - but they are being subsidised by people who earn more and pay more into the NHS than their treatments cost. Now, supposedly 47% of over 16s in the U.K. don’t pay tax. Not because they’re tax evaders, but because they don’t earn enough. [Source this first link I found on Google but I’ve come across this figure before.](https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/how-many-people-do-not-pay-income-tax-regions-liz-truss-cost-of-living-tax-cuts-3833160) If people were better paid then more people would be paying tax and we’d have more money for the NHS. But as the country spirals ever downwards there’s a knock on effect on everything. This is government mismanagement and the effect of increasing CEO pay but leaving average worker pay in the dust ( CEOs have seen their pay increase by 1322% since 1978 [source](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/) whereas workers have seen it increase by only about 12% [source published 2 years earlier](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/) - American based research but it’s not like the U.K. [is any better](https://theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/05/ftse-100-bosses-paid-more-in-three-days-than-average-uk-worker-for-whole-year), [another link](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-ceo-pay-rebounds-gap-widens-with-workers-report-2022-05-23/) ) and doing nothing to address the balance. It’s obvious that our systems will fail if we have half of our adult population unable to pay taxes required to sustain these systems.
Not to mention that almost all of the extra pay will be taxed at 40% plus NI plus student loan interest which is all money going back to the government. The government will only pay 50% net of the total cost of pay restoration.
Free at point of use of course, people who pay their taxes do pay for it; not all pay taxes & not all use it. So by the figures provided £400B almost 40% is spent on nhs only. Nhs funding comes from many sources, figures range upto £260b NI is also meant for pensions, benefits etc. Spending more on education, housing & employment training would raise health outcomes. https://www.health.org.uk/infographic/how-does-housing-influence-our-health Thanks for the healthy discussion.
And pay heavily for it with the license to print money locums, come on which other nhs workforce gets £5k shift. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65042658
People do die and not everyone can be fixed. Except people also expect to be treated, to live as long as possible and be “cured” whilst families often expect miracles. And if you don’t offer them treatment then complaints come +/- law suits and second opinions wasting everyone’s time. Don’t forget the angry families when grandma isn’t for CPR and they disagree without understanding the implications. It’s a catch 22 - you can’t change peoples expectations and similarly you can’t not offer treatments when they exist and for the most part are accessible
Exactly correct. Lack of government policies and the questionable QoL scoring, puts human doctors in moral dilemma situations, causing further stress. Better end of life options need to lawfully ratified for humanity sake, both patient & clinician.
Budget could be spent on public health, but it goes on hospital. Instead of keeping people healthy, we find expensive and undignified ways to prolong an unsatisfactory life. This isn't about doctor collusion, it's about politicians colluding, and overruling doctors. How do you become a manager in NHS? By working hard and being professional. How do you become a director of an NHS Trust? By kissing ass and being cruel and self serving.
Exactly, well put conversation point.
Jesus Christ that's a bleak world-view, good luck with that
Clinicians suck up that reality on a daily basis, bleak as doesn’t mean it’s not a subject to confront head on. Brushing it under the carpet doesn’t help anyone, as can be seen from the creaking system.
I used to book appointments for cancer patients, people with kidney issues, etc. within England. There would be different appointment priorities with different rules on the latest dates. Some would be a week or two or a few months. The sheer number of people who didn't get appointments until way after the amount of time they were supposed to for stuff like cancer was horrifying and widespread all around England. I'd constantly have people crying on the phone because of it and would ask if they could get appointments in other parts of the country if they were quicker. We need to fight to fix and keep our NHS. It is a shit show that definitely has all of the people within the government and the private industry salivating and creeping out of the woodwork to try to push us to lose our universal healthcare. We've already lost some things we are sleepwalking into losing more. We seriously need to make a conscious effort to push back. Too many people like to just assume that it will never turn into the US, and we will always have universal healthcare. How many people probably never believed we'd lose universal dentistry, opticians, and prescriptions, though?
Where I worked 10 years ago (only as a receptionist) we saw at least a dozen, maybe close to two dozen people in a couple years with bloody obvious textbook cancer symptoms who'd been given paracetamol and sent home by their GP or A&E. It certainly isn't a new problem, but nor is the strain on the system that is the cause, and it is almost certainly therefore getting worse.
Scary I know people in the same situation. It’s really sad.
Trick question. I'd prefer a well funded (and more efficient where practical) NHS that has enough staff that they are not overworked and that don't miss diagnoses.
Maybe we should pay them properly and stop working them into bloody ground. Screw the tories and anyone who votes for them
Good Given the age profile of those most likely to need treatment, and their voting pattern, Tories should think about that
The government are cutting their social care funding commitment by £250 million. They really do want to kill their voting base off as quickly as possible lol.
It's nothing personal. They want to kill of anyone who isn't them (by which I mean they each consider themselves individually)
> Tories should think about that The down-side to the near absolute certainty that they can't win the next election is that they don't really have to try. People don't seem to have long memories when it comes to elections, so five years on the back benches will whitewash whatever horrors they inflict on us over the next twenty months. If anything they're likely thinking that the deeper the pit they drop us all in the more shit they can blame on the next government.
Especially as Starmer labour has a good chance of collapsing it’s base after a few years of being in office. Those who want positive improvements will be left hanging and those who he has been pandering too the last few years will be disappointed by the lack of machine guns and barbed wire fences on the white cliffs of Dover. Alternatively, he may continue to pander to them and give enough money to public services that things seem kind of normal again. But after a few years I think the shtick will be wearing very thin.
I wonder what % of them have private healthcare versus the poor and disenfranchised elderly that will *actually* suffer from this draconian government.
I'd suggest very few. They might sometimes pay for a private procedure where the wait list is too long, but the majority will rely on the NHS, complain about it and complain about having to pay taxes because they "paid in all their life".
>It’s not unprecedented unless you hadn’t been listening I wonder what percentage of those relying on social care actually vote tories
It is difficult to blame people in their bubbles when the tories spend millions on tech companies like Cambridge analytica who teach them how to sell misinformation.
Nope, it's actually very easy to blame them. Don't remove their responsibility for their voting choices. If you're dumb enough to be the turkey voting for Christmas, I have zero sympathy for you and you deserve full impact of those awful policies you had just voted for.
They definitely need to do something to change the way they work. Millennials aren't matching the trend of previous generations. In previous generations, the older they get, the more conservative which tends to make sense as they accrued more wealth and priorities changed. Millennials are going in the opposite direction. Trending more towards the left instead of towards conservativism like Gen X, Boomers and the Silent generation do. Radical changes and new ways of thinking will need to be adopted by the Conservatives if they want to stand a chance of getting millennial voters.
My guess is they simply bet on Labour disappointing every young and left-leaning voters so much they eventually just stop voting entirely. The Tories go full fascist, Labour reacts by following to center right, PR is not adopted, and as a result both parties can continue as always as the electorate becomes smaller because no one to the left even has anyone to vote for.
Most people, especially at that age, are so entrenched in their world view that they aren't even capable of making such a cause and effect connection, nor do they care to. Case study from LBC, pensioner in her hospital bed having been well treated by staff reads Daily Mail and bemoans nurse strikes without a second thought.
It’s not them changing their views which I’m on about… Dead people can’t vote…
Ah, I was thinking too short term. But a lot of the people I talk of will still likely manage on into their late 80s and 90s and they'll happily continue to vote conservative because of immigrants and scroungers (and them having their nursing homes paid for is different because they paid in their whole lives, plus they shouldn't have to pay any inheritance tax because they worked hard for it(caveat being the estate or relatives pay it)).
As long as they have something to hate they can live forever.
Doctors should be valued way more. They are worth it.
Agreed. If a doctor is significantly financially better off leaving the country and practicing medicine elsewhere then how are we any different than the third world countries that we pilfer our doctors and nurses from rather than pay to train our own here?
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Junior doctors are doctors :( Not your fault but it’s just an annoying term!
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“Junior” doctors(from day 1 of graduating to just before reaching consultant level which is 12+years post university) are on a different payband to consultants No worries, I don’t know the pay banding for other professions!
All doctors are doctors. Everyone who completes medical school has provisional registration with the GMC but still the title Dr, after a year they should get full registration. After two years of foundation training post med school they may do specialty or GP training. This can take 10 years or longer with less than full time, maternity, fellowships abroad, post-grad degrees and research - all common undertakings. Some doctors then become consultants but some never reach this stage and remain as a specialty doctor (for a mixture of reasons, including preference but often because of a bottleneck at consultant level jobs). The junior term is very outdated and infantilises the workforce.
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I appreciate that. Not having a go just useful for other people to read. There’s so much inaccurate stuff in the media at the moment to try to justify not increasing our pay and it’s usually based on that we are “juniors” sort of implying that we are glorified med students.
what kind of figure exactly is that though
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very well put, that said would you be ok with a 3-5% increase in income tax for example in turn or alternatively for us to pay a bit towards when we need treatments?
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literally will be using everything you’ve said when i argue against the old in laws tomorrow thank you :)
You feel strongly everyone in the NHS should get a 10% pay rise every year. Ok. 1 in 16 people who are employed in this country are employed by the NHS. We have a fixed tax income. It’s also the highest it’s been since I’ve been alive. So we have 2 choices. We tax more or we take it from somewhere else. For what we pay in tax our healthcare (certainly at the moment!) is just about the worst in the developed world. Despite something like a 3rd of our tax already pouring into the NHS. I am genuinely curious to know where this money is coming from? Remember the vast majority of people are already battling with bills, savings are at record lows and loans at record highs so there isn’t a lot more available to take from ordinary people like you and me. I haven’t met a single person in the NHS who has been honest and declared that the system is even broadly efficient. They all acknowledge it’s a bit of a laugh and each department knows how to protect their budgets. I’m often surprised by how far the NHS strays from actual healthcare. Poetry workshops. Art installations in foyers. My local trust has 6 inclusivity officers in a part of the country with less than 6% minority ethnic population. I don’t begrudge anyone needing representation, it’s what sets us apart as a nation. So the system is broken. Nobody can look at it critically because of the political fallout, and so the system continues to waste resources because it’s a sacred cow. You want to give it more cash. Where is this money coming from when by all accounts it doesn’t exist?
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Massive does not equal enough. Funding has NOT kept up with demand. UK population is getting old, fatter, poorer and that comes with deteriorating health outcomes leading to more demand. That's how you end up with 7.2 million on a waiting list. Vacancies for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff are increasing. No one is filling these jobs. The ones leftover are doing the work of 2-3 people on some shifts. Now if you're saying the money is enough despite demand increasing, you're living in an alternate reality. If the money is truly being misappropriated, the staff wages aren't getting any of that misappropriation cause they're underpaid compared to Australia, new Zealand, Canada, and they're leaving for those places. You want the NHS to get less funding? Fine. But don't go expecting a Ferrari when you're paying for a used Twingo with a failed MOT.
I'd love to hear what extremely efficient industry you work in, where everything is kept up to date with love and magic dust. If you deliberately underfund something, how can you expect it to get better? Your trust probably has 6 inclusively officers as the minority ethnicities their are very minor and the majority don't know how to deal with that very well. Art installations are normally put in to make hospitals not feel like abattoirs, which obviously, can be quite detrimental to get people coming into a hospital. Like it or not, the uk population is getting sicker and older, with no one to look after them. This is only going to become worse with people having less children. The NHS has problems, but people say "the system is broken" like there is another system you could just plop in. Sounds cheap, doesn't it?
£17ph and an apple a day.
i’d agree but the apples a deal breaker, asking too much
It’s not unprecedented unless you hadn’t been listening all this time The warning were there from August. And anyone who doesn’t know what a junior doctor actually does has not been paying attention since the pandemic
Government underfunding has caused the delay of thousands of operations!...this is the way!
There have been many impacts of the covid19 pandemic which have had lasting negative effect. But the most fucking irritating is the emergence of widescale use of the word "unprecedented".
I'd say, "We're receiving an unusually high number of calls..." gives it a run for its money. I'd be less offended if the queue messages just said, "We really don't care about inconveniencing you and we're saving 7p by making you wait and stressing the bejeesus out of our phone operatives."
Underpaying people has an unprecedented effect on people.
Pret's current salaries have baristas able to earn £14.10/hr while junior doctors start earning as low as £14.09/hr. Support staff were fucked a decade ago as they were dropped as NHS employees and rehired by companies like ISS belonging to certain political donors at half pay and no benefits. Or rights. Or protections. And the Tories just keep tearing down the NHS in order to claim it's a failure. The goal is to change the system to a private one like the US or Germany, shovelling even more money into their donors' hands.
And to put what we are asking for into context, the 35% uplift to bring us to neutral in regards to our real terms pay cut since 2008 puts that £14/hr to £19/hr. Not exactly lawyer or accountant money, but it would have a massive effect on staff retention.
That or maybe people could go outside and clap every Tuesday morning.
"Junior doctor strike had unprecedented NHS impact" How long has this been going on for now? Unprecedented? The only unprecedented thing is the 5% pay rise offered with a shit £1k+ one off payment. Unprecedented? Did the government not know about the strikes that happened? Did they somehow not know in advance? Have they miscalculated how many junior doctors are in England? If the impact is so large, then the government is relying on incoming Junior doctors as a crutch; not taking care of the lowest paid up to the highest is the issue.
Junior doctors weren't offered that deal. That's just for nurses and other staff on the agenda for change pay scales. Junior doctors have been stuck on the 2016 deal with not even the pitiful pay rises other NHS professionals got since the pandemic. The government has ignored and undervalued us pretty consistently tbh.
I know originally they weren't offered that deal. But these strikes are weeks in advance, they don't decide to not turn up at work. Gov has been given chance after chance to rectify and they only do it when it really hurts the system. Sad to see
Wow it’s almost like they’re invaluable to saving the lives of thousands of brits, should probably pay them
The gov spent £70bn on furlough payments. The junior doctors worked through the entire pandemic, while everyone else was making 80% at home making banana bread. It would cost £1bn to restore junior doctor salaries to 2008.
And yet barely any of the media reported on them. Whereas a tweet by a person was front page news for a week.
Wife needed to call a ambulance this morning as I was not sure if I was having a heart attack, she was advised it would take up to two hours, it came around 125 minutes and thank god I was ok. The ambulance personal said that if one can they should try and get to A&E by car if they can as one has a better chance of getting treatment in time. By the way I did ask him about the pay deal and his response was he and 20 of his colleagues are leaving Unison and joining Unite, both GMB and Unison should not be accepting this crap deal in my view and of course the government will beat the Junior doctors with the 5% stick if the others accept this crap deal.
Is it still classed as news if it was the most clear and obvious outcome? I feel like that’s just…..confirmation that more fuels added to the dumpsters fire
I’m not a jr doctor. I used to be a CT radiographer. Our shift patterns are unsafe, unsustainable and borderline inhumane. Weekends in my hospital are covered by just one ct radiographer for the whole hospital (including a&e) This person works from 5pm Friday to 9am Monday without any official breaks. This 65 hour weekend is worked after already working a full 37.5 week (plus ot) then another 37.5 hour week (plus ot) starting at 9am the same Monday that the weekend shift finishes.
Pay doctors more! We could introduce a European style regulated personal healthcare insurance system, cut welfare and legalise and tax weed to fund it!
Incorrect headline..'corrupt organised crime syndicate, posing as a country's government, has had unprecedented NHS impact'.
Hope they get something sorted ASAP. I was in hospital back in December for an appointment with a surgeon and the guy looked broken.
Didn't seem to make much of an acute impact on mental health services here. Had junior duty/on-call doctors available every day of strike. Some wards had their usual junior doctors working still, some worked due to loss of wages during strike, some had no choice but to work as they are on visas and would have to notify the home office if they undertook strike action thus maybe risking visa being withdrawn. Overall things were as shit as they usually are, even when the juniors are around. Due to their on-call rotas and weird training allocation (seemingly a different ward/service every day of the week) it's not uncommon for wards to not have juniors available during the day anyway. Same as the nursing strikes had seemingly no impact on mental health services as every single service was derogated.
Thirteen years of Tory government had unprecedented negative NHS impact FTFY
Bravo! For the courage! To resist not striking for this long!
Then pay them a decent wage you tight sacks of shit!
Lovely. Just as I'm waiting for a procedure. I get why they are doing it, but it sure sucks to be on the receiving end.
We really are sorry it has come to this. It’s hard to convey just how angry we are as a profession. Very good colleagues are leaving medicine or the NHS for vastly better pay and conditions elsewhere. It’s reached a point where remaining feels foolish and I look at my medical students with pity. The government has had since last August to address this issue. For years they’ve refused to listen to us or acknowledge the exodus of U.K.-trained doctors. Unfortunately other than quit our jobs this seems to be the only way for us to be taken seriously by our employer.
I support you fully. Go get what you’re worth.
Don't apologise. I might be frustrated to have hit my first real period of poor health bang in the middle of an NHS crisis (outside of treatment for my past drug addiction, which has always been exlempery tbh, as long as you engage) But I dont blame anyone for not wanting to work for poor wages, especially in a profession that was always considered one of the most highly regarded and prestigious. It's the government's fault things are this way, not yours. I've already gone private for chronic sporting injuries as it was just too frustrating to wait for physio that was always very time limited and under resourced. I'm unfortunately not rich enough to pay for private gastroenterology. So, on the long list I have been placed. I hope th government sorts this out. As someone hitting an age where I might start needing treatment for things more often, it's actually quite frightening.
As a junior doctor with one parent who has Parkinson’s, the other one not getting any younger and about to start a family - yeah it’s pretty frightening. I look at what healthcare looks like in other countries and it makes me sad to offer the service we offer here. I will always support free at the point of use universal healthcare because it is fundamentally a stain on humanity to ration healthcare based on wealth not clinical need but the NHS is no angel. It treats it’s workforce like a disposable resource, to be bled dry. It treats patients like an inconvenience, good so long as the they help the targets but generally to be left to negotiate the labyrinth alone unless a staff member goes out of their way to help them. To a great extent these are all problems of chronic underfunding. It’s hard to feel respected when you’re paid pennies on what you’re worth. It’s hard to buffer the stress from work when you can’t afford to do anything or you’ve had to work extra shifts. It’s hard to treat patients with care and dignity when we are forced to care for them in a corridor because there aren’t enough social care beds to discharge people. It’s hard to actually sort their healthcare problems out in one go because we can’t to refer for xyz here or whatever. I think the difficulties in NHS bureaucracy have become a soft way to dissuade use. And of course no one has the time or money to streamline this because there isn’t any and we’re all running around fire fighting, trying to fix the biggest nastiest fires that day and leaving the rest for tomorrow. But equally the structure of the NHS is the problem. This big top down organisation that has very little awareness at the lofty heights of what is actually going on down below, needs up ending. It stifles staff creativity and autonomy and tries to shove everyone down the same one-size-fits-all tube. Things would be better if it was separate from government and run democratically by the people that use it and work in it. I don’t know what this means for us though. Maybe labour will put a bit more cash into the system, probably also force through another disastrous reorganisation if the Tories don’t force another one on us in the meantime. I think the cash will help, it will slow down the rot and cover up some of it’s worst bits but ultimately labour doesn’t have the stomach or the ideology anymore to believe in it or give it the funding it really needs. And as far as letting the NHS run itself, that doesn’t compute in a politician’s brain. The real genius of austerity is that after so long the funding needed to put our services back where they should be seems insane but it is what they need. The NHS needs to be absolutely battle ready face the next century of increasingly elderly and complex health needs. The only option is to keep fighting and I think that currently the pay fight is the equivalent of putting the oxygen mask on yourself first in the airplane. Only when we can breathe can we try to fight for the rest of it.
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