Monthly Archives: July 2015

NHS Wales should be praised for employing agency nurses to keep care standards high

The facts about health service pay: If NHS Wales is having to employ agency staff, perhaps it is because the Conservative Government does not provide enough funding for NHS employees. Maybe this is why so many have been lured abroad by higher pay and better standards of living.

A Freedom of Information request by the Welsh Conservatives has revealed that NHS Wales had to spend £190 million on agency doctors and nurses in the last four years. Shame on NHS Wales, right?

Well, no. This merely demonstrates the cack-handed way the Conservatives have been running the health service since taking office as part of the Coalition Government in 2010.

Does anybody remember reports last year that the Conservative-led Coalition Government had dumped 4,000 senior nurses since 2010, considering them to be “disposable” and “a quick way to save money”?

Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said at the time: “We are facing a Europe-wide shortage of nursing staff and the last thing the NHS should be doing at this time is treating its highly experienced staff as disposable.

“We need to be doing everything we can to retain the skills we have in the NHS rather than using them as a quick and easy way to make savings.”

These words clearly fell on deaf ears in the Department of Health, which continued to cut nursing staff. Cuts in health spending in England are mirrored, via the Barnett formula, in funding provided to the devolved health services elsewhere in the UK, meaning that the Welsh Government has had to reduce money provided for other services in order to address the cut in spending – and service standard – caused by Tory changes.

That has taken several years to accomplish – as this blog has made clear in previous articles. The Westminster government’s grant to Wales has been cut by a massive 10 per cent since 2010.

And what has happened to our highly-qualified NHS staff members in the meantime? It seems they have been attracted abroad by foreign health services that treat their workforce with more respect.

Vox Political commenter karenmarieuk, responding to a recent article, told us: “My daughter now lives in South Africa and is treated by British staff at both her GP surgery and her local hospital.”

She asked: “Why do our health care professionals have to emigrate to earn the respect they deserve? Our nursing staff are canvassed regularly by Australia, being offered incentives such as housing and vastly improved lifestyles as well as pay that puts the UK to shame! This is just one country from many.

“When, I wonder, will the UK stop this mass exodus and try keeping staff here?”

When indeed? Never, under a Conservative government.

The Welsh Tories have shot themselves in the foot (again) with their ridiculous claims following this FoI request. The total amount spent on agency staff by NHS Wales comes to 1/120 of funding every year, to be compared with the 10 per cent cut from Conservative and Conservative-led Westminster governments.

Conservative politics has caused the problem, not a Labour-run health service.

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Conflict of interest? Tories are planning to legalise bribery and corruption

[Image: Daily Telegraph.]

The Conservative Government is considering whether the public is stupid enough to accept the legalisation of bribery and corruption. And why not – some of us were stupid enough to vote David Cameron back into office, after all.

The pretext is a claim that UK businesses are finding it hard to do business overseas, so apparently it’s Johnny Foreigner’s fault for wanting backhanders before letting our goods into his country.

The government is now consulting on whether facilitation payments – money or goods paid to foreign government officials to perform or speed up their duties – should be re-legalised.

They were banned in the Coalition Government’s Bribery Act of 2011, in which the Conservative Party played a large part – meaning this will be a policy U-turn by the Tories.

Critics have pointed out that the proposed change would undermine the law in other countries along with the UK, as well as global efforts to counter corruption.

And anti-corruption campaigner Transparency International said corporate lobbying appeared to be the basis for the review, rather than evidence. It said 89 per cent of companies surveyed in the Government’s own research (released earlier this month) reported that the Act had no impact on their ability to export.

It seems the pressure to reverse the law is coming from a minority of businesses – who, let’s not forget, are still allowed to lobby the government despite the Transparency of Lobbying Act, which we know was passed to make it harder for those with more legitimate issues to raise them.

So we’re looking at a situation in which businesses want the ability to bribe governments – and our own government is considering allowing it.

Conflict of interest?

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

If Jeremy Hunt will go to A&E rather than wait for a doctor…

Will he look as happy after a 3am interview with Dr Rachel von Simson?

… why shouldn’t Dr Rachel von Simson go to David Cameron rather than waiting to see Mr H*nt at an inconvenient time?

It seems the fashion this summer will be for people to challenge the Conservative Government’s inconsistencies (hypocrisies?) with open letters, and this one is published to follow the missive published by This Blog on Tuesday by Tony Cartwright.

This Writer’s favourite parts are highlighted in bold.

Dear Mr Hunt,

I would like to come and see you this Saturday at 3am to discuss the issue of street lights in Hindhead. I know you run regular constituency clinics to discuss these matters and that there are other services I could contact in an emergency, but these are not convenient for me as I work on week days. And really Mr Hunt, this is the 21st century and people have questions for their MPs 24 hours a day, not just during office hours. If I can buy a Tesco sandwich at 3am, I should be able to see a politician.

If you won’t see me during the hours that I find convenient, I shall turn up at the Prime Minister with this question. I know it isn’t really part of his remit and he’s quite busy with lots of other emergencies, but much like when you said you go to A&E with your kids rather than wait for a GP appointment, I don’t really feel like I want to wait until Monday to talk to you about this.

I know that going to your clinic at 3am means in addition to you you will also have to have security turn up, and a receptionist and you don’t have money to pay for that but otherwise your building will just be sitting empty and that is a waste of money. I don’t care that you claim that you need the weekend to catch up on unpaid work or see your kids, I know that you are actually just playing golf and doing private consulting work instead even though you are grossly overpaid. I don’t think you should have got a pay raise recently to cope with rising of living, because this is austerity and I really can’t see a problem with you having to catch a bus for two hours in each direction after your working day to get home.

Even if you were to claim that public satisfaction was high in politicians and that you provided good value for money compared to the much more expensive systems in other countries, I’m just not interested. I want to see you at 3am to discuss street lighting and if you disagree that is because you are a lazy fat cat who doesn’t care about the public.

I would also like you to raise the issue of getting the Ukrainian Holodomor recognised as a genocide during upcoming parliamentary sessions. I know it is going on recess on July 21st for two months but I think it is outrageous that non-urgent matters should wait that long. I don’t care if a lack of recess would cause childcare problems or discourage women from being part of parliament. I don’t care if one of the reasons people went into politics was that despite it paying a lot less than the private sector, it left weekends and recesses free for family time. You should have anticipated that politics would become a 24/7 profession and if you won’t adapt, I’m going to just force your contract to change for no extra money.

If you cannot attend the session at 3am because you have already worked all week, but have managed to find another politician at short notice to step into to do this, I don’t want you to be paying them more than £10 an hour, because it is an outrage to waste public money and he should understand that being asked to work at the last minute during unsociable hours when he has already worked plenty this week is part of what he signed up for when he became a politician.

I’ve not actually consulted with any politicians about whether they think 24/7 politicians will work, and yes, I’ve never actually worked as a politician but I have a 1st in a totally unrelated subject from Oxford, so I don’t see why there is any problem with me telling you how politics works and how to do your job. I know you think with these suggestions and no extra money I will ruin public politics and that I and the people I work with have ties to private politicians that could come in and replace you, but this is all a fantasy. I’ve got the best interests of politicians at heart.

Yours sincerely

Rachel

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

A doctor writes on Sarah Vine’s decision to take Michael Gove to the wrong NHS facility

Michael Gove leaves hospital on crutches after his wife drove him to the wrong NHS facility.

Please enjoy this letter, posted by “emigrated consultant” Tony Cartwright on Facebook.

Ms Vine

I am another UK doctor who is writing a letter to government, if only to satisfy my own anger and frustration. You must all be getting quite tired of this, really.

Ms Vine, you took your husband to a 17 bed community hospital out of hours… and you really expected the full flow of a trauma centre ? This is an unrealistic expectation and will never be the case. We could staff Shepton Mallet Community Hospital with a 24/7 radiology department for the use of ‘people like us,’ as you describe yourself and as you suggest at the end of your missive, however I suspect your husband’s friend, Jeremy, and indeed the PM himself may have something to say about that and the funding and staffing involved. And then what…orthopaedics too and a bit of general surgery…all squeezed into a 17 bed community hospital with no operating theatre. What about the follow up – the nurses / receptionist / plastering tech / porters / radiographers. Really ? And the cost ??

Your nearest emergency department is either in Yeovil or Bath, both a fairly tiresome 40-60 minute drive, and had you gone to either of these hospitals you would have had an X-ray at any time of the day or night and been referred immediately to orthopaedics if required, oh, and been reviewed by a Consultant, for urgent treatment if required and/or some conservative (that word is beginning to stick in my throat) management with advice. That would have resolved your issue later on the Sunday, however I suspect you had many more important things to do than ensure the comfort and health of your husband.

It was your and/or your husband’s choice, for whatever reason, to not take your husband to a doctor in an emergency department in a timely fashion following his injury and, instead, to take him to a unit that was never designed to be equipped to deal with a major fracture (toe, was it ?) out of hours. You see, with repeated changes to funding and allocation of resources within the NHS, the local A&E departments that I remember as a child have been wound down and closed. You and your husband have the freedom to be able to choose to live in a beautiful leafy part of Somerset far from the madding crowds and you therefore have to make a little effort to access those services that larger hospitals provide 24/7/365, and you decided not to make that effort. Surely you could have used a little of your husband’s 10% pay rise to cover the cost of a little petrol/diesel and some hospital parking to get either to Bath or Yeovil, both centres of NHS excellence ? Your decision not to is not our fault. Do not blame us for your lack of effort or forward thinking.

To then level your inappropriate decision making at the NHS doctors and nurses, and gloss this with a fairly healthy dose of ignorance about healthcare provision in the NHS, is absolutely disgraceful, insulting, and only proves further how ignorant politicians, and now apparently, also their wives, are. The comment ‘….he doesn’t have a spare half-day to sit around awaiting the pleasure of the hospital radiographer…’ only further demonstrates the absolute contempt in which politicians hold doctors, nurses and other allied medical professionals. Your attitude is disgraceful.

Yes, I am a UK trained Consultant. However I saw what the likes of Jeremy Hunt and yourself are doing to the NHS through the media and government and I emigrated, like many others have done and are increasingly doing so. This does not, however, attenuate my upset when I see people such as yourself, who are clearly professionally ignorant of Healthcare provision in the UK, being so openly vitriolic towards the phenomenal institution of the NHS and my UK colleagues, who are highly trained, skilled, utterly professional and respected the world over, except, apparently, in the UK. You should respect them and everything they do and not hammer them for what they don’t do, largely due to direction from above, over which they have absolutely no control. The NHS is respected and revered the world over. It is the envy of almost every country in the world and you openly lambast it in your paper ? Just think about that for a moment.

Your expectations of the current NHS are completely unrealistic and your demand for every community hospital and treatment centre to have 24/7 care displays a level of ignorance regarding healthcare provision and financing which, considering you announced this in a national paper, is quite simply astounding. This triad is complete with your vitriol and implied criticism of my highly trained, skilled and professional colleagues which is utterly disgusting.

Yet again, the government is serving its own end and ignoring the populace and the entire Healthcare sector.

This is all a bit of an own goal, really.

Regards

Tony Cartwright

Emigrated Consultant

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

“Numbers should be a light, not a crutch” | Telling it as it is

The government reckons most mandatory reconsiderations of ESA decisions take place within 14 days, and this is correct – 52 per cent of them do.

But around 44,000 took longer than a month.

Maggie Zolobajluk’s article paints the whole picture – that the DWP remains keen to obscure.

Source: “Numbers should be a light, not a crutch” | Telling it as it is

Why Are Labour So Scared, When Their Opponents Seem Permanently Terrified? | TheCritique Archives

The modern Tory Party is as mediocre as it has ever been, not only intellectually, but also in terms of moral fibre. With the odd exception here and there, today’s Tories are neither intelligent, nor ethical, nor courageous. Defeating them therefore, for anyone with a half-decent brain, really should just be a matter of holding one’s nerve.

What really bothers me is comparing the way the ‘Blue Labour’ faction, from which most of the leadership candidates have emerged, reacts to something that is genuinely disastrous for millions of people, with the way it has reacted to the emergence of a leadership candidate who just happens to be some way to their left…. There have been loud, bitter, angry, spiteful objections from the Blairites to Corbyn’s candidacy, some of which have sounded almost childish and petulant (typical of right-wingers of a different hue), and, above all, with hardly a note of restraint.

Even though the evidence suggests that it is absolutely correct that Corbyn is standing, as he is giving an outlet to the views and frustrations of a very large and otherwise-voiceless majority in the party, he does not embody what the Blue Labour-ites want, and so they throw tantrums, possibly to an anti-democratic extent.

But when the Tories are putting forward proposals to throw potentially millions of people on the scrapheap, the objections that the Blairites present are cautious, half-hearted, and never supported by action at the moment that it really counts.

It is when fighting the Conservatives, one of the primary purposes for which the Labour Party was founded in the first place, that Labour’s ‘big-wigs’ seem to lose their nerve. It is when fighting members of their own party that they seem to lose their inhibitions.

Surely, it should be the other way around?

Source: Why Are Labour So Scared, When Their Opponents Seem Permanently Terrified? | TheCritique Archives

Disability assessment system ignores evidence and pushes claimants towards death

Hoax: That’s how the DWP has described many people’s claims for PIP and ESA. In fact, it seems the assessment system itself is the hoax, and the government department the hoaxer. [Image: Getty Images]

If you have a long-term illness or disability but have wondered why you receive low scores on the government’s face-to-face ‘work capability assessment’, here’s why: The software is written to ensure that any information you provide may be ignored.

That’s right – the tick-box test program that the DWP took from criminal American insurance corporation Unum, which had been devised to make people ineligible for insurance payouts, does not take into account any of the claimant’s personal details.

David Daish, a programmer and software tester, went through the PIP assessment process and then provided his professional opinion on the software to Facebook page Atos Miracles. PIP is the most useful benefit to discuss in this context because the onus is on assessment providers, rather than individual disabled people, to gather evidence from a list of health and social care professionals provided by the claimant.

He wrote: “The software is written so that whatever the assessor writes in the first part of the report, such as history, and anything the claimant tells the assessor, there is nothing whatsoever in the second part, the choosing of descriptors, that is connected to the first part.

“This means nothing is built into the programming to make sure the assessor uses all the evidence that was (hopefully) collected, or was provided elsewhere, and then can subsequently make the right descriptor choice.

“The assessor can basically say anything they like. Nothing in the software forces them carry out the assessment fairly.” [bolding mine]

He went on to describe the software as “little more than a glorified Word document: “A piece of programming that is not integrated in any way, has no checks and balances to make sure the business process it is supposed to support works as it should, that is, the PIP assessment itself, is in my view unforgivable. I’m inclined to think it is deliberate.”

That is a perfectly logical conclusion to draw.

This would suggest that the increased stress, the despair and hopelessness instilled in claimants by the loss of their benefit for no good reason, and the subsequent loss of life through suicide or exacerbation of the health conditions that the assessment system insists do not exist, are also deliberate.

It also makes sense of the apparently-illogical decisions being thrown out by the system all the time. Citizens Advice has stated: “Both Atos and Capita [PIP assessment providers] have made snap decisions about whether PIP claimants must attend a face-to-face assessment. Even when they do request evidence, providers only need to tell claimants who they have asked for it – not whether they actually received any or what it said.”

It seems that any such evidence would be ignored by the assessment software in any case, so it should come as no surprise that Citizens Advice continued: “In the absence of additional evidence, an astonishing 98 per cent of all assessments have been face-to-face… This is adding substantially to the delays and financial hardship experienced by disabled people.

“We now have two different systems for gathering independent evidence in PIP and in ESA, neither of which is working for claimants, assessment providers or the DWP.”

As someone with only limited knowledge of computer programmer, it is probably not for This Writer to comment. But my own knowledge suggests that a teenager from the 1980s could have produced a better program, using BASIC, than Unum and the DWP have managed here. A series of simple ‘IF… THEN’ loops would have ensured that all relevant information was taken into account.

Perhaps this is what we should do.

I don’t mean we should write a BASIC program to show up the inadequacies of PIPAT (the actual assessment system) – rather we should endeavour to produce our own program that performs in the way the public has been led to believe PIPAT does. Then we could run a few assessments through it (the DWP must provide full details of assessments and outcomes if these are requested, so they won’t be hard to acquire) and compare the results.

Is that a reasonable suggestion?

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Discrimination against the disabled now includes their family members

[Image: Slidesharecdn.com]

A healthy man was sacked from his job because he had caring responsibilities for a daughter with cystic fibrosis, a tribunal heard.

The employee – a Mr Truman – had indicated to Bibby Distribution Ltd that he would have to spend more time caring for his daughter because his wife, the primary carer, was starting her own business.

He was dismissed from his job on the day he reached one year’s service with the company, on the grounds that “his heart was not in the business” and his primary customer was dissatisfied with his work. Significantly, Mr Truman would have become entitled to unpaid ordinary parental leave after notching up one year’s service. His dismissal on the first anniversary of his employment meant that he was denied this right.

An employment tribunal found there was no satisfactory explanation for the dismissal. The primary customer had not indicated any issues with Mr Truman’s performance – nor had the company’s management.

As a result, the tribunal found that the employer committed associative disability discrimination and a remedy hearing was arranged.

Associative discrimination is the act of discriminating against an individual because of an association with another person who has a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. The individual who brings an employment tribunal claim would not have the protected characteristic him or herself. A protected characteristic is a trait that the law has determined should not a basis for employment decisions, the equality Act 2010 lists protected characteristics as age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnerships; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation.

Carers need to be aware that employers may try to discriminate against them in this way.

Have they already suffered without knowing they are protected by the law?

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Here’s how to get signs like these!

According to Twitter, increasing numbers of Haverfordwest residents are signing up to make their streets look like the image above.

What a great idea!

Do you want to get these signs? According to The People’s NHS, you get them by visiting this site.

Please do so, sign up for some boards, and get your message across!

Perhaps then the government – of the UK and the EU – will get the message.

*For further information on TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – and the threat it poses to the UK’s National Health Service, see previous Vox Political articles on the subject.

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Chronically-ill Glenn Harris used electric saw to commit suicide

No doubt the DWP will say it is “irresponsible” to equate this death with this gentleman’s fear that, burdened as he was with lupus, he would lose his benefits.

A DAD … took his own life with an electric saw after he feared his benefits would be cut, an inquest heard.

Father-of-two Glenn Harris, 55, suffered from health problems and worried about how possible changes to his benefits would affect him.

Mrs Harris told the inquest her former husband lost a sister two weeks before his own death and was already grieving the deaths of his mother and another sister in December 2014.

She added: “He was panicking about these benefit letters”.

Coroner Paul Kelly recorded a suicide verdict.

Source: Chronically-ill Glenn Harris used electric saw to commit suicide | Latest News | Breaking UK News & World News Headlines | Daily Star

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

Vox Political

politics for the people

Monthly Archives: July 2015

NHS Wales should be praised for employing agency nurses to keep care standards high

Like this:

Conflict of interest? Tories are planning to legalise bribery and corruption

Like this:

If Jeremy Hunt will go to A&E rather than wait for a doctor…

Like this:

A doctor writes on Sarah Vine’s decision to take Michael Gove to the wrong NHS facility

Like this:

“Numbers should be a light, not a crutch” | Telling it as it is

Like this:

Why Are Labour So Scared, When Their Opponents Seem Permanently Terrified? | TheCritique Archives

Like this:

Discrimination against the disabled now includes their family members

Like this:

Here’s how to get signs like these!

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: