The buck... just gets lost. in the shuffle

One has to really seriously doubt the competence of both the Ministry of Defence and the current British 'regime'. Are either actually fit for purpose?

The harrier jump jet is a highly effective fighter jet with very useful capabilities not found elsewhere. The British government has seen fit to spend money on them and then scrap these fighters.

It seems however others recognise a perfectly good piece of newly renovated kit fit to last another 10 years or more even if the cretins in charge of the UK don't.

The US military, who seem to be capable of supplying their armed forces properly, unlike the British MOD, have snapped up the whole lot of them as a bargain.

Still it is hardly unusual, there are NHS managers who have committed their NHS 'trusts' to crippling public private finance deals no one but a naive idiot would have contemplated, like a stone round their necks, driving them into virtual bankrupsy and then flitted off to bigger and better things. Others who have presided over appalling unnecessary loss of life who flit off to some similar role apparently without any real cost to themselves.

What amazes me is the fact that there are whole divisions of "Sir Humphry's" out there of one stripe or another warming civil service seats and collecting a generous wage who never - ever - seem to be held accountable for their utter incompetence. Incompetence one can't help but feel verges on criminal.

This all presided over by Ministers with one suspects, ill thought out schemes who seem to have a tenuous grasp of things at best.

The buck never seems to stop with those responsible, there hardly ever seem to be any consequences for them.

Food for thought

The UK government and it's indirectly government financed “pressure groups” and “Charities” have been really pushing the anti obesity thing for some time now with talk of taxing certain food products plus having set minimum prices for alcohol and punitive taxes on it too.

If you are overweight you are not just morally reprehensible because the Puritanical socialist-patrician classes don't approve of you.

No from their tone you are not just a resource hogging criminal because you are personally destroying the UK's National Health Service.

Now it seems you threaten the whole planet, every last one of us, every creature and plant you are personally making “Climate Change” worse and you must be stopped.

UK State clampdown on employing illegals

Well New-Labour’s kakistocracy is clamping down on firms that employ those (sub text - nasty foreign spongers) illegal immigrants. They made it illegal to employ illegal immigrants, they prosecuted companies that did and now they are going to pillory the employers by ‘naming and shaming’.

The lie they tell to justify this?

Apparently it’s all to help crush major organised criminal enterprises that use international people trafficing networks to smuggle people into the UK, as a supply of illegal labour. Any way the employers deserve it. They are unscrupulously undercutting the labour market by avoiding paying taxes on wages, that are below the minimum wage anyway. Why, surely virtually stealing jobs from the honest hardworking indigenous population...

...who find they make as money on benefit doing nothing than they could from such jobs as the immegrants are doing.

That’ll help drive up the cost of food and services. Is anyone out there using more than just a single brain cell to parse these excuses?

So we take one step back from the spin and lies.

The real problem is that New-Labour have effectively lost control of the UK’s borders. For years if illegal immigrants decamped from trucks and were caught they would be given instructions to make their way to reception centres and directions, the vast majority of whom promptly vanished. Those that were not caught vanished also.

Rather than have an effective system (this is New Labour here) they persecute hapless lorry drivers and employers, trying to force them to make up for government incompetence and despite a massively ramping tax burden state under funding.

OK. Now lets take another step back. Is there one? Yes.

Why is this a problem? Why are illegal immigrants a problem? Why are they illegal in the first place for that matter?

They claim benefits from a system they never contributed perhaps? Drain the good old NHS of resources when they never paid anything into it? Jump the social housing queue? Etc. etc. etc.

The underlying reason is that in sufficient numbers immigrants are a problem for a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state, with universal entitlement like the UK’s, designed to run in isolation. Such a system also undeniably makes the UK much more attractive to economic migrants exacerbating the ‘problem’.

Without a welfare state that is constructed in the way the UK’s is immigration would become much less popular. Immigrants would not be a drain on the public purse either. They would either contribute to the economy and stay or not. If not they would not be able to survive here and would leave. If they committed crime then, tried, imprisoned then deported.

All that would be left would be boarder security issues and any social problems left.

Maybe that’s why New-Labour are so keen on the ID card and illegal immigrants (Oh - and of course the ‘War on Terror) will be their excuse to justify it…

What is wrong with the UK's NHS?

Some readers will be familiar with Calum Carr’s battles with the NHS simply looking to get adequate treatment for his wife and this prompts me to wonder.

It is an illustration of some of the problems with the NHS on a human scale.

According to the State’s own statistics, never exactly a source to be trusted in recent years (if ever), 6,000 people died in 2006 after contracting the superbug Clostridium Difficile, a massive increase over recent years. At the same time MRSA increased over a third, the infection featuring in almost 1,700 death certificates in 2006..

One suspects in many cases it contributes but is not mentioned. In many other cases the patient thankfully survives.

Even Hospitals that have isolation policies do not follow their own procedures. I personally witnessed an instance where a patient who had contracted MRSA whilst in hospital and who had been isolated was visited by administration staff who could not be bothered to follow any of the precautionary procedures posted outside, that we, as visitors had followed. No wonder these bugs spread.

Over the same period money has been thrown at the NHS hand over fist with little discernable improvement. There has been a drop in the last quarter, but often where things get better in a few instances they seem to get worse in many others. We should have seen a much greater impact much sooner. In fact the problem should not have become such a problem if the trusts had actually followed recommendations.

Health spokesman Norman Lamb said the State had failed to ensure recommendations from their own experts were followed.

It seems that the Sate is simply not competent to oversee the NHS. The same would appear to be true of the vast and expensive army of administrators recruited by the state to administer it.

The experience of the NHS, for far too many people is inadequate, incompetent ineffective and uncaring. It is to the credit of those who work in the system who do still manage to provide a caring service that this poor experience is not universal.

More administration and more targets seem to only result in a worse service. Something seriously needs to change.

Social Care for elderly in UK set to take a turn for the worst

Gordon brown apparently wants to make social care for the elderly in the UK ‘fairer’. If only that were indeed the case – actually really fairer.

The sad fact is that, based on easily duplicated empirical observation of New-Labour’s efforts to make things ‘fairer’ in other spheres of life, is that ‘fairer’ is New-Labour-speak for, crap and getting worse, but an enforced equally crap for all treatment. Preferably at the same time suppressing any proof that things could be better. It is unlikely to be any different in this case.

The fact is that because there is never any actual money invested behind these schemes, because they are instead funded directly out of taxes there is looking to be a rather large gap between what is available to fund care in the next 20 years and the numbers requiring it. Oh and Gordon helped make sure the country is brassic by selling off half our Gold reserves when the price was at a historic low. You have got to hand it to the man with the financial acumen…

You can easily understand why this has caught new-Labour and Gordon’s vaunted financial acumen flat footed, after all it was only predictable since they came to office. It’s not like the baby boomer generation is a state secret, or the fact that people get older as time goes by, any more than the names and addresses of every recipient of child benefit is – now…

Average UK hospital waits rise under New Labour

Before New Labour came to power in 1997 waits for hospital treatment of more than 18 months were not rare, now no-one waits longer than six months. Hurrah! Yes? – No. Not necessarily.

Sounds good, at first sight though, dosn’t it? The sort of soundbite Gordon Brown would proudly boast of in PMQ, or at conference.

The thing is the average wait has risen from 41 days to 49 days. Only 8 days up you may think. But it is 8 days longer on average.

This is a symptom of New Labour thinking. Everyone must be brought to a level. It’s like education, rather than raise up those getting a worse service they bring down everybody to the lowest level. The lowest common denominator, as they used to say - when such terms were recognised and understood by more people. So practically speaking overall levels of delivery drop.

Just so with waiting lists. To drop that headline figure to 6 months it is true that the really long waits have been drastically cut – but so have the really short ones.

So why did there used to be really short waits?

The question is who prioritised those waits back then? Well Doctors did, based on medical need, the urgency of the case. Now they are prioritised in order to meet state targets. One size fits all. So if you really need a short wait…

As chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, Jonathan Fielden, pointed out "Doctors have been stopped from using their clinical judgement and pushing people through the system when they need to be.”

So the question you need to ask yourself is: Are you actually getting a better service, or just taken for yet another ride…

Private treatment initiative underutilised by NHS, rollout halted.

It seems that Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs), created in a bid to cut waiting lists, to take care of minor surgery and diagnostic tests such knee and hip replacements, hernias and cataract operations, are being under utilised. Some are being passed only half the work they agreed to handle.

This is hardly surprising when you realise that it is not in the interests of cash strapped NHS hospitals to pass them patients - as they are paid per person treated and have to compete for the patients.

Under this arrangement It makes economic sense for NHS hospitals to hang on to as many patients as possible, even though this may disadvantage the patient, as it may involve, at a minimum, much longer waits for treatment.

Thus the contractual arrangements have the, presumably, unintentional side effect of sabotaging the initiative.

David Worskett, representing private health providers, pointed out that part of the problem was also due to GPs being reluctant to utilise them in some areas.

There have been two waves of ISTCs opened since they were announced in 2003. Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, has scrapped some of the second wave because of ‘lack of demand’, despite waiting lists. He has also pulled the plug on the third wave.

This may not necessarily be seen as entirely bad, or to be avoided, by NHS supporters who are vehemenently opposed to any private sector involvement on ideological grounds. It is also likely some employed within in the NHS may closely identify their interests with it’s remaining as it is.

Karen Jennings, of Unison stated: "This is money that should have gone into the NHS."

New Labour claim to be close to hitting MRSA targets

In 2004, the Health Secretary at the time, John Reid, set a target of slashing MRSA rates in half by March 2008, though the exact details were never exactly defined beyond the sound-bite level. Only last year the Department of Health felt this, even as ill defined as it was, was unattainable, according to a leaked memo.

Now it seems the Government are briefing the BBC that it will consider the infections target met if there are 963 cases, or less in the quarter April to June 2008.

There is more than one way to use statistics.

Recorded honestly they are like looking in the mirror when you get ready in the morning. They give you accurate feedback, allowing you to see if your hair is sticking up, or not - and allowing you to either ensure it is, or brush it down, depending on your taste.

Then there is the ’lies, damned lies and statistics’ way, so beloved of the State and developed to previously unheard of levels of sophistication under New Labour - where they fiddle what is measured and how it is measured, in order to bamboozle the voters into the impression that the Government have actually accomplished something.

This method will generally not work in industry when analysing sales (except occasionally at shareholder meetings - but not often, as shareholders tend to pay attention and remember as it is their money at risk), as it persistently results in disastrous decisions and the company in question going bust.

In the case of the State/public sector however, the positives generally outweigh the negatives - The reward for conning the voters is re-election, or advancement. Any losses can always be made up in increased taxation.

This might not necessarily be so if the Government were actually honourable ;-) or genuinely identified themselves with the citizen. If more of them were of ‘us’ instead of ‘them’, or if actually achieving something were more important than only appearing to do so, say because of an unavoidable reality check.

Experts fail to spot boy's deafness caused by 'cotton bud'

When he was two years old Jerome Bartens was diagnosed as deaf in his right ear.

Now after nine years and Drs and specialists who believed it was wax and he might ‘grow out of it’, it turns out to have been caused by the tip of a cotton bud he stuck in there as a toddler. It popped out whilst playing with friends.

Apparently he has struggled with lessons his whole school career because of this.

Belief is all very well and good. It is highly thought of in religious circles. But when it is possible to test something empirically surely reliance on pure belief is not necessarily, as they say, ‘best practice’.

Every Dr’s surgery I have ever been in has the equipment to look in your ear.

Why on earth didn’t someone out of all the Drs and Specialists who saw him think to actually look?

Is the UK’s Welfare State actually still functional?

What is the point of the National Health Service (NHS) and social care under the ‘Welfare State’ if many of us will apparently be effectively barred from making use of it - whilst still being required to pay through the nose for it, under ever increasing levels of taxation?

If New Labour intend to exclude large numbers of the public from enjoying the dubious benefits of the ‘welfare’ state - and it seems it is in a ‘state’ ;-) for ideological, or moralistic, reasons. Then those affected should be allowed get their money back and opt out, to allow them to be able to make other arrangements.

It is expected that a report to be published tomorrow (Tuesday), will confirm that drastic tightening of rules over which elderly people qualify for state-funded care in their own homes is leaving hundreds of thousands bereft of help and in dire straits.

Lack of funding is being blamed for many councils only supporting the seriously ill or incapacitated. In some cases, pensioners are having to sell their homes to help pay for private care, or beg their families for money.

The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) thinks the problems are likely get worse.

The Audit Commission has been instructed to produce produced a report ‘backed’ by New Labour Ministers. It demands councils should "make better use of charging" for services, including home care, rubbish collection and parking. This includes removing caps on charges for home helps and other services for the elderly who have managed to save for their old age.

The intention is to force people who have paid their share of local tax and National Insurance over the years, but can manage to find the money themselves somehow, to switch over to private care companies.

The Commission say: "In making council home care services less competitive by removing the weekly maximum charge, some councils have sought to encourage their most affluent service users to purchase services from other providers, freeing up council resources."

Strangely, this is the exact reverse of the argument deployed by New Labour against Grammar schools and Independent schools.

Now, according to a survey conducted by Doctor magazine, Doctors want to withhold NHS treatment from patients they judge are too old, or who lead unhealthy lives.

They want to bar; Smokers, drinkers, the obese, elderly and those seeking "social" abortions from receiving some treatments/operations.

They say the NHS can’t afford to provide free care to everyone. About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions more often found at hospitals unable to manage their debt.

Advocates of refusing treatment argue that £1.7 billion a year is spent treating diseases caused by smoking, such as lung cancer and emphysema and this drains money away from treatment from the more deserving.

They conveniently fail to mention that non-smokers, who have never recklessly exposed themselves to so-called passive smoking, can also suffer from these illnesses.

There is something else they don’t mention when attempting to justify their views. It applies equally well to alcohol as tobacco.

In 2005-06 the excise duty raised on tobacco was £8 billion, The VAT charged on, the cost of Tobacco, plus the excise duty paid on it, was £1.9 billion. So that year the State milked the British Smoker to the tune of around £10 billion pound. Tax on tobacco products has risen since then.

This leaves aside their actual contribution to the NHS.

If New Labour are only spending £1.7 billion on smokers alone then that leaves them £8.1 billion in pocket – New Labour are making a tidy profit out of smokers.

There may be some extra temporary costs associated with sickness/disability payments but this is more than compensated for by smokers reduction in life span and the reduced pension payouts that follow. According to the Dr’s logic Smokers are paying the State for pensions they may never get to collect in full.

The Economic argument for with holding treatment does not hold water. Economically it would almost certainly actually pay the State to encourage smoking, so the underlying moralistic health fascism is exposed.

This is more evident still in the evident desire to punish women who fall pregnant by accident and produce another generation of state clients. Again the economics are clear. The cost of an early abortion is as nothing to that of child benefit and a single mother on benefits.

Finally where is the line in all this? What are the limits to what our self appointed masters and moral guardians will impose upon us? What other forms of behaviour they disapprove of? Who else will they refuse to treat? There is something deeply disturbing about this attitude.

It seems we are all in danger of having services we have paid for and rightly expected to benefit from randomly and arbitrarily withdrawn when we are most in need of them. Especially if we have committed the crime of being prudent, or enjoy a glass or two of wine – and whatever happened to the health benefits of wine we were told about?

If we can no longer expect to receive the services we are entitled to, because we have paid through the nose for them, then surely it is unreasonable for the State to expect us to continue to pay for them, effectively having to pay for them twice - and unwise of us to continue to do so?

If they can’t deliver they should get out of the business and leave it to those who will honour a contract and actually can deliver.

Conservatives want to be the 'Party of the NHS'

It seems that Dave the Chameleon has aspirations to make the Conservatives the “Party of the NHS“ replacing New-Labour.

Another general fighting the last war.

It is blatantly obvious that New Labour couldn’t manage the NHS to save their lives (or it seems those of the rest of us). What is amazing is that Dave thinks he could do better.

Realistically it is possible he might do a little better, as it would be difficult to be quite as incompetent and clumsy as Gordon & Co, but it needs more than that.

The underlying problem with the NHS is that it is run by the state on a national basis. It will do no good to put a State Quango in charge of it either, that would probably just make it worse and soak up yet more tax.

Health care in this country needs a radical shake up. Maybe the State, if it wants to be involved so desperately, should consider limiting it’s involvement to providing a basic level of health ‘insurance’ and let the medical profession manage the system.

It should get out of the management of health completely - and not institute detailed control through legislation instead.

Something like the systems operating in quite a few European countries such as Germany, Holland and Ireland. They could include coverage for compensation for loss of work due to illness.

Such a system could easily still be ‘free’ at the point of delivery and might even allow people to visit the dentist again.

If a Hospital was failing, then patients could take their custom elsewhere. If a new hospital was needed then it could be built by subscription, or privately. If there was demand it would do well if not then it would close and not waste taxpayer’s money. If people wanted smaller cleaner more local hospitals and the demand was there then they would be successful.

Yet more personal details lost by the UK State, this time the NHS

You really can’t trust these cretins with your data.

The Department of Health has now admitted they have lost data pertaining to 168,000 people!

Unable to look after the data they have they are planning a single giant database of 50 million patients.

The scope for loss on that will be so much more spectacular, but then they don’t really care if they loose it or if someone else can use it – as long as they have access to every detail of every citizen.

Then let's not forget the National ID Database these authoritarian incompetents are so desperate to force on the citizen.

And what a perfect time to bury bad news, when everyone is busy rushing around trying to think if they have everything they need for Christmas guests and the family. Chasing last minute presents… too busy to pay attention to the news?

Free prescriptions in Scotland Paid for by English taxpayers.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Nationalist Government’s health minister, said she wanted to erase ‘inequality’ in the NHS.

But it seems that some, are more equal than others, because her solution is to massively increase inequality in the NHS. She is planning on using English Taxpayers to subsidise the abolition of all prescription charges north of the border by 2011, within the lifetime of the current Scottish Parliament.

This is in addition to the free eye care and dental check ups already provided.

This is about as an extreme version of the so-called postcode lottery as you can find. Made all the more galling by the fact that due to inequalities in the tax distribution system English tax payers are being milked by Scottish politicians to fund a first class service for the Scots they do not get themselves.

It also leaves entirely aside that Scottish students will be able to avoid the burden of student dept and get a free university education, at the expense of English students having to subsidise them when that start work, whilst servicing their own debts.

One wouldn’t mind so much if it were a matter of ensuring everyone in the UK enjoyed the same standards in thinks like health care. It is understandable that for various reasons it may be more expensive to provide an identical standard in different geographical locations.

It is an entirely different thing when votes are being bought by politicians who are unaccountable to the those being taxed, buying votes from their own electorate with a two tier service.

What was that phrase? ‘No taxation without representation’?

It may be entirely coincidental that Nu-Lab’s, Gordon Brown, his glove puppet Chancellor, Alistair Darling, Des Brown, the Defence secretary and Douglas Alexander, International Development, to name but a few, all hold parliamentary seats north of the border.

The cost to the South East will only get worse when the government’ssecret council tax re evaluation for England finally takes place, as it is likely to bite hardest there. The re evaluation was supposedly postponed in 2005, but the process has continued in secret.

Since it was ‘postponed’ the government have ploughed in £3.2 million to develop a new revaluation database incorporating every home in England. So far despite the so-called ‘postponement’ the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) have gathered details of millions of homes, cataloguing things like how many WCs, bathrooms properties have and if they have conservatories or greenhouses.

Documents indicate they will also be looking at things like how ‘nice’ the area is, what parking spaces are available - Basically anything that can possible be stretched to justify ramping up the tax and punish anyone who wants to better their lives, or the environment they live in.

Gordon Brown - His hand always in your pocket

Broon’s got to pick a pocket or - not just two, but every householder in Britain.

Gordon Broon, no doubt with an eye on electioneering, is announcing that he is planning to pour yet more money into the NHS, an extra £1.4 billion per year.

Side bets on how many times he announces this extra spending and in how many different permutations.

Now the typically sneaky Broon part - The average council tax bill is set to go up by a staggering £200 (double the expected the rate of inflation) over the next three years to cover it!

This might even almost be acceptable - if anyone imagined for a moment that it would make any improvement to what we actually get out of the NHS.

The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), calculates that Council tax will rise by five per cent a year. Nu-Lab is naturally enough trying to keep this under wraps. By 2011, the average bill will be around £1,500 or more.

Since NU-Lab came to power Council tax bills have consistently risen well above the rate of inflation, as Gordon brown cynically used them to stealthily increase taxation, whilst apparently successfully fooling the sheeple by distracting them with relatively reasonable headline income tax rates.

This disproportionately and punitively shifts a greater proportion of the tax burden on to householders and their families, whist others avoid the burden.

Another party conference - another self serving spinning sound bite

In a speech today at NU-Lab’s Party conference their Health Fascist in chief Secretary Alan Johnson, had the nerve to criticise Dave the Bloke’s "Party formerly known as the Conservatives", claiming they were a "major risk" to the NHS.

Why? Apparently because they are calling for a moratorium in wholesale casualty department closures.

Now it seems on the face of it that more relatively small local casualty departments, able to handle the normal run-of-the-mill stuff - combined with some larger more advanced establishments could actually be beneficial.

The fact is that many in the UK, contrary to the spin pushed by Nu-Lab politicians, will have experienced an increase in the distance it is necessary to for them to travel to reach an A&E Department.

Without moving house, the distance it is necessary for me to travel to reach an A&E Dept has gone up from around 2 and a half miles to seven and a half and now sits at 12 miles. From my own practical experience the time necessary to be dealt with once you have arrived has risen over that same period.

There is no way Mr Johnson can convince me (or probably anyone else other than the Nu-Lab faithful) that this is an improvement.

Certainly not what you might see as; reshaping the NHS to become "clinically led and locally driven", treating patients close to home where possible…

Parents left with limited options now make more use of A&E

This one is an absolute classic. Dr Patricia Hamilton head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, is complaining that parents in the UK are now more willing to take their child to A&E with a minor problem, such as a fever, instead of dealing with it at home or calling their GP.

Oh really! She might try the experiment of calling NHS direct out of office hours herself. She could claim she had a small child and they were running a fever. She would find that the advice she was given, especially if it is filtered through non-medical parental perceptions, was effectively to go straight to A&E, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

Now most people are very reluctant to go to A&E. Despite the frankly untrue claims of being seen within some fictitiously tiny amount of time, we all know that it can only be counted as a personal miracle if you are really seen within 2 hours, as opposed to being assessed by someone - possibly a cleaner :-) - and then put to the back of a very long queue behind a retarded thug barely retraining their natural urge to random violence and a 15 year old single mother with a flat head and one continuous eyebrow. Recent personal experience you will no doubt deduce…

So the average parent, or indeed anyone sensible, would have to be pretty desperate to use the average A&E at all and would probably be more that happy to take even advice from their own GP as an alternative if it were actually possible to speak to them.

So then not more willing then, just faced with fewer opportunities to avoid it.

So perhaps she really needs to direct her comments to the incompetent Governmental department in question or ditto hospital ‘manager’. Then she could be given duff advice and told to wait uncomfortably for and indefinite period.

Whilst complaining about parents actually using A&E she also took the opportunity to get in a plug for the Government’s propaganda line on the (probably soon to be crime) of childhood obesity and on the ever encroaching ‘menace’ of child binge drinking.

At least the latter has regulations and laws, that if actually enforced would work well enough to prevent it, though this is unlikely to stop the government from passing a whole raft of entirely pointless unnecessary legislation that will cause some unexpected consequences far worse than the so-called problem.

UK Drs reduce home visits by half in 10 years

The latest official figures on UK GPs show more consultations are now carried out by telephone and nurses see one in three patients. More damning, home visits carried out by GPs has halved in ten years.

Figures also show they are putting in on average seven hours less work per week yet also doing more consultations.

One wonders if they can fit the extra consultations in because they are reluctant to do home visits.

Ten years ago if your child had a temperature of 103 °F (39.5°C) chances are your Dr would come out to do a home visit. These days (certainly out of hours) you are told to take them to the nearest NHS direct facility, probably a few miles away.

It’s OK if you don’t work, but most Drs are effectively office hours only and getting a non emergency appointment is not always easy.

Seems that GP’s practices are taking some of the workload hospitals used to carry too, maybe this is having an impact.

It is all probably done so it looks good in Government ‘targets’, but is it actually good for the patients?

Many would say the difficulty in getting a home visit from a Dr from your own practice, or even from someone at all, outweighs any theoretical gains.

Pressure group urges Air ambulance be absorbed into NHS

The health union, financed and supported, Pro NHS pressure group London Health Emergency is, as is it’s brief, pushing the NHS agenda and urging the charitably funded London Air Ambulance service be absorbed into the NHS.

The UK Department of Health is resisting this arguing that these services are very expensive to operate and a decision must be made locally on whether the service should be supplemented. They also point out that they do provide the clinical staff for these services.

The London Air Ambulance needs £750,000 to keep the service that flies out of Whitechapel, East London, from being grounded and has recently appealed for more donations.

Clearly the service is valued by the people of London, or it would never have ‘got off the ground’ ;-) in the first place.

The problem for the DOH, if they fund this, is that it will cost them money, lots of money. There are charitably funded air ambulances all over the country once they create a precedent there are those (not least amongst them LHE) who will argue: ‘Why should London be funded when they are not’?

A further consideration is that currently, not being subject to stifling NHS management, these services are generally quite effective and responsive to the public need. In fact it is logical to conclude that if it were up to the NHS they would not actually exist at all and would certainly be vulnerable to cuts if the NHS controlled their budget.

Personally I would be far happier if my own air ambulance service were to stay well out of the clutches of the NHS and the CFD household make regular contributions to help keep it that way.

Given the vast wealth in London, especially in the City and Canary wharf it is difficult to understand why their funding is short. One would have thought it would be in the interests of businesses and corporations with a large presence in the Capital to donate to the service - Not to mention the citizens of London.

If you live in, or work in London, think about how, for a few pence, you could help keep the service going.

It would be nice to know it was there if you really needed it and couldn’t be closed by funding cuts - wouldn’t it?

If enough people think it important and donate then it’s future should be secure.

You can donate here. Pass it on…

Hat tip to SarahC on this one for drawing it to my attention.

Bomb plot Drs qualifications not good enough to work in Oz

Amid all the furore about the UK cell of Islamisist Terrorist ‘Doctors’, there are some points that the great and good of the mainstream media - and our political classes seem to have failed to pick up on to any extent.

We know that at lease two of those implicated in the terrorism, Khalid Ahmed and Sabeel Ahmed, applied for employment in Western Australia, one applied more than once under slightly different names.

The reason they were not in Oz, instead of breaking their solemn oaths to ’do no harm’ in the UK, by providing Terrorism, free at the point of delivery?

Must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs when the too those oaths, or would that be crescented? – can you do that?

Yes the reason - Because their qualifications weren’t up to scratch.

Now this begs the question. If they weren’t good enough to be let loose of the Australian public how come they were good enough to ‘practice’ their ‘skills’ on the poor old unsuspecting British Public?

One must also wonder just how low the NHS goes qualification-wise and why exactly is it necessary to stoop to what ever level it is, when there are British trained Drs unable to get posts? It conjures up (hopefully inaccurate) images of half trained foreign vets trying their hand at brain surgery.

Also ;-) does Michael Moore Know?

Health Minister denies NHS anti smoker 'witch hunt'

Plans to get smokers to quit before being given surgery are not a form of "health fascism", argued Health Minister Lord Hunt, after he was urged to step in and overrule plans by local NHS trusts, which peers feel look like part of an anti-smoking "witch-hunt".

Yesterday, Conservative Lord Naseby raised the matter of an NHS primary Care Trust wanting smokers to give up, before having surgery, as managers felt it might improve recovery time. He pointed out that it was one example, of several similar proposals, for smokers, as well as those which targeted obese people.

He observed "there are all sorts of activities which, if stopped, would save the NHS money and ensure that people got better treatment."

Independent Labour peer Lord Stoddart pointed out that smokers paid much more in additional taxation than non smokers when they bought tobacco products and were "entitled to at least the same treatment as others".

He demanded to know by what right the "twenty five percent of adults who smoke - and the millions who are technically obese - all of them have paid their taxes and national insurance - are to be denied certain NHS surgery".

Lord Tebbit enquired how Lord Hunt would feel if similar rules were being applied to people, for instance whose sexual habits, "make them vulnerable to particularly unpleasant sexually transmitted diseases".

Lord Hunt avoided the question, blustering that it was "quite ridiculous" and in any case "This is a completely different issue"

Lord Stoddart asked Lord Hunt to use the NHS Acts to overrule the "discriminatory action". Adding, "There is an impression that there is a witch-hunt against smokers in particular.".

Lord Hunt argued that it was a clinical judgement, in the patients' interests and did not amount to a ban on smokers. He indicated that it had not been drawn up by the government but by Doctors and in any case it had not yet been approved.

He went on that it could mean fewer heart and lung complications, faster wound healing, faster bone fusion and shorter stays in hospital and said "This is not health fascism, it's not about discrimination against smokers, this is about what's best in the interest of the patient in terms of clinical judgement, and that is how it should remain."

No wonder the Government would like to emasculate the House of Lords, a difficult lot who tend to say “Now hang on a minute…” at inconvenient moments.

Now, since the subject of ‘health fascism’ came, up an observer might think that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….

As for the “it hasn’t been approved yet” argument! Yet is the operative word and they were trying to ensure the proposals never were. We can be sure they will come up again – and again – and again…