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@Crucial said in British Politics:
I think the NHS general issues and cock ups are the same as found in many public health systems around the world. What hasn't helped are the funding cuts and salary freezes.
Strangely the Brexit campaign by Boris was heavily toward restoring funding (remember the bus?) but no actual sign of that in this election campaign.I thought both sides were promising big spending on the NHS?
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
@Crucial said in British Politics:
I think the NHS general issues and cock ups are the same as found in many public health systems around the world. What hasn't helped are the funding cuts and salary freezes.
Strangely the Brexit campaign by Boris was heavily toward restoring funding (remember the bus?) but no actual sign of that in this election campaign.I thought both sides were promising big spending on the NHS?
You may be right. Maybe the Tory stuff was lost in the noise for me. That’s why I thought it was strange
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@Crucial said in British Politics:
I think the NHS general issues and cock ups are the same as found in many public health systems around the world. What hasn't helped are the funding cuts and salary freezes.
Any industry full stop. I guess the difference being NHS can't fail in the same sense as a private company. I've worked in a behemoth Telco before and saw how much wastage there was there and an almost impossibility to make changes. Can only imagine that would pale in comparison to the inner workings of the NHS.
What funding cuts are you referring to? From what I've seen NHS budget has only increased with the demand still outstripping the supply.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget
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@Rembrandt interesting, I found Beckenham very good when I lived there and the Beacon (drop in) has been invaluable after many a rugby game.
Mixed bag elsewhere. Dulwich I spent something like 3-4 months with a never ending headache, multiple visits to the doctor only to be told just keep taking paracetamol. No tests, nothing. Luckily one day I woke up without it, so obviously the doc was onto something there.
When I did my achilles the NHS was fantastic, "walked" into Kings college emergency and seen by a doc in less than an hour, quick accurate diagnosis and temporary cast, back in the next day for proper cast and booked for operation 2 days later. Even when they fucked up it was good. After I got the stitches out (just about to start physio) it was found the fucken Aussie nurse left a stitch in at both ends. Major infection and 5 days in hospital just before Xmas but a great result (i.e. No surgery required so flesh and achilles left intact).
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Experiences with the NHS are, these days, something of a post code lottery. In some areas the resources are nowhere near the degree of usage, in other areas it's all fine. My wife's family live in SE London and even in the same borough you see discrepancies between hospitals and as @Rembrandt suggested, the nicer the area the better the service, in general.
My view is that probably the biggest problem facing the NHS is wastage, not just the anecdotal tales of £££s spent for no good outcome but a criminal wastage of time. If something is free at the point of use, people just don't value it and misuse it as they see it as their right. My local GP has taken steps to remedy this by making appointments harder to arrange, this might seems strange but their view is that if the process is made more difficult it is less likely that the time wasters will bother, whereas if you really need to see your doctor you will persevere. They feel that their data backs this up.
If this is indicative of the wider problem, where does this leave the NHS? God knows, but in it's present form it is becoming unfit for purpose in some areas.
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The NHS here covers all parts of the spectrum, depending on who you speak to. Labour is of course convinced that it's now utter dogshit and it's the Tories fault, but then the Tories simply state that it needs work on, but what public service doesn't?
FWIW, I think it's pretty good. If you wake up feeling ill, I can call my local GP when it opens at 8:30 and will always get 10 mins to see somebody that morning. The local A & E we've had to frequent 5 times (including my Mum & Dad when here as tourists) and the average time spent there was only about an hour - longest was 2 hours. Although we do have private insurance should we need it through work, so far I've never felt the requirement for it. My colleague's Dad had the big C and he said the treatment / follow-ups etc were truly outstanding and couldn't fault.
In HK we had private and things weren't much different to what we've had here in UK. If shit went really bad, all the private hospitals did was send you to the public as they had the best equipment. You just didn't have such nice surroundings.
So yeah, you do hear the horror stories, but on a day to day basis, I've no problems with it.
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@MajorRage said in British Politics:
The NHS here covers all parts of the spectrum, depending on who you speak to. Labour is of course convinced that it's now utter dogshit and it's the Tories fault, but then the Tories simply state that it needs work on, but what public service doesn't?
FWIW, I think it's pretty good. If you wake up feeling ill, I can call my local GP when it opens at 8:30 and will always get 10 mins to see somebody that morning. The local A & E we've had to frequent 5 times (including my Mum & Dad when here as tourists) and the average time spent there was only about an hour - longest was 2 hours. Although we do have private insurance should we need it through work, so far I've never felt the requirement for it. My colleague's Dad had the big C and he said the treatment / follow-ups etc were truly outstanding and couldn't fault.
In HK we had private and things weren't much different to what we've had here in UK. If shit went really bad, all the private hospitals did was send you to the public as they had the best equipment. You just didn't have such nice surroundings.
So yeah, you do hear the horror stories, but on a day to day basis, I've no problems with it.
The biggest problem with the NHS is repeat patients who do nothing to help themselves and continue to be a drain on the system without contributing to it.
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I lived in Penge West for quite awhile, then moved to Sydenham.
Earlier I lived in Honor Oak Park
This was before all the annoying antipodeans moved in. Those colonials were confined to Sheperds Bush and Acton -
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
annoying antipodeans
A bit harsh. I don't always agree with @antipodean but he's not that bad.
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@Snowy said in British Politics:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
annoying antipodeans
A bit harsh. I don't always agree with @antipodean but he's not that bad.
Tahs supporting Kiwi. That’s all.
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@MajorRage said in British Politics:
@Snowy said in British Politics:
@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in British Politics:
annoying antipodeans
A bit harsh. I don't always agree with @antipodean but he's not that bad.
Tahs supporting Kiwi. That’s all.
Fair call. Annoying Antipodean it is.
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@Rembrandt said in British Politics:
Any industry full stop. I guess the difference being NHS can't fail in the same sense as a private company. I've worked in a behemoth Telco before and saw how much wastage there was there and an almost impossibility to make changes. Can only imagine that would pale in comparison to the inner workings of the NHS.
What funding cuts are you referring to? From what I've seen NHS budget has only increased with the demand still outstripping the supply.I've worked in health and I can tell you that any publicly funded system that deal with outpatients simply can not be funded enough - it's a bottomless pit to throw public money into.
Thankfully I never needed to visit a doctor while over there, but I'm guessing where I was wasn't under provisioned.
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@MajorRage said in British Politics:
The biggest irony of the whole thing regarding the NHS is just how many immigrants work in it.
I don’t buy into the whole UK will be begging from everybody post leaving the EU spin. But it’ll certainly be begging for medical staff.
I heard someone remark that the NHS had failed with their training of "local" medical staff. Fair comment I thought.
That's not a dig at anyone, but the administrators
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Free Broadband!!!
"A new entity, British Broadband, would run the network, with maintenance - estimated to cost £230m a year - to be covered by the new tax on companies such as Apple and Google."
..uh..huh..I'm sure multi-billion multi-national corporations won't find a way around that..
"Mr McDonnell said that if other broadband providers did not want to give access to British Broadband, then they would also be taken into public ownership."
Well at least he is consistent I suppose...
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@Donsteppa said in British Politics:
As a highly sweeping generalisation, a lot of their locally trained NHS staff seem to end up here. And vice versa.
Highly sweeping generalisations is what the Fern is built on.
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@Baron-Silas-Greenback don't forget Kanada Water and Earlsveldt.
British Politics