[News] Happy 71st, NHS

[El Presidente]

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no one wants to go to the US model, even the Americans dont want it.

Yet they voted for someone on a ticket of repealing 'socialist' Obamacare...which was itself poorly implemented, but better than the alternative of using GoFundMe as a means of obtaining treatment.

 

[Simster]

Once again Simster, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Anyway, have a good weekend in sunny Reigate; my wife is back up there today to visit her mum.

Let's flip it on it's head - what damage do you think Corbyn would do that somehow surpasses the diabolical mess this government has made of the country? We'd all end up paying obscene tax rates I'm sure, but unless we got anything resembling value from those tax hikes, he'd be out 5 years later. On the other hand, the Tories have caused lasting damage that will take decades to repair. They have been utterly incompetent. Anything else is worth trying after this shambles.

I'm afraid I'm in Southampton/New Forest this weekend looking at universities, so not in Reigate. Something that'll cost my son and I £20k thanks to you Tories. Yes, I know there is a good argument for paying your own way, but if you could just explain what has happened to that £20k I'd be grateful. I've got 3 kids, I can't imagine that nasty Jeremy Corbyn is going to cost me £60k in taxes for absolutely f*ck all in return. At least with him, I reckon we'd see a marked improvement in student funding, schools and hospitals. With you Tories it is all jizzed on ploughing on with a crippling no deal Brexit, spending millions on non existent ferry companies and apparently funding more tax cuts for those who need it least.

As I say, they are a shameful incompetent bunch that even this Labour front bench would have trouble being as useless as.

 

[BLOCK F]

Let's flip it on it's head - what damage do you think Corbyn would do that somehow surpasses the diabolical mess this government has made of the country? We'd all end up paying obscene tax rates I'm sure, but unless we got anything resembling value from those tax hikes, he'd be out 5 years later. On the other hand, the Tories have caused lasting damage that will take decades to repair. They have been utterly incompetent. Anything else is worth trying after this shambles.

I'm afraid I'm in Southampton/New Forest this weekend looking at universities, so not in Reigate. Something that'll cost my son and I £20k thanks to you Tories. Yes, I know there is a good argument for paying your own way, but if you could just explain what has happened to that £20k I'd be grateful. I've got 3 kids, I can't imagine that nasty Jeremy Corbyn is going to cost me £60k in taxes for absolutely f*ck all in return. At least with him, I reckon we'd see a marked improvement in student funding, schools and hospitals. With you Tories it is all jizzed on ploughing on with a crippling no deal Brexit, spending millions on non existent ferry companies and apparently funding more tax cuts for those who need it least.

As I say, they are a shameful incompetent bunch that even this Labour front bench would have trouble being as useless as.

I'm not going to get into a political discussion at this time:
a) Can't be arsed
b) haven't got the time
c) It has all been argued to death on NSC and continues to be so.

Good luck with the unis.Two of my three went and have large debts despite us helping them out as much as we could.
Number two son(ex Bournemouth Uni) starts a new job in London at the end of this month and, wow, his new problem is finding somewhere half decent to live at a price he can afford. Perhaps we should have stayed in Reigate and he could have commuted!

 

[beorhthelm]

I'm afraid I'm in Southampton/New Forest this weekend looking at universities, so not in Reigate. Something that'll cost my son and I £20k thanks to you Tories. Yes, I know there is a good argument for paying your own way, but if you could just explain what has happened to that £20k I'd be grateful.

a question for the university?

 

[Marshy]

I agree totally with you that no credit should be given to the EU for the creation of the NHS, our greatest invention of the twentieth century.

Equally I fear for its future in the hands of Johnson/Hunt as they wish to extend the creeping tide of private sector involvement, leaving just the non profitable elements in public ownership.

I will let you into a secret, having worked for the NHS for 20 years, its already privatised.

 

[lawros left foot]

Our NHS has saved my life a few times in the past, and after a diagnosis this morning, looks like it’s gonna get the chance to do it again.

 

[sussex_guy2k2]

Are they against the NHS?
They may believe reforms are necessary, but I don't believe they are 'against' the NHS.
Oh well, whatever you may believe, had the Labour Party not fallen into the hands of extremists who are deemed unelectable by most in the country, there would be a viable opposition to the present Government and those deemed to be anti NHS,wouldn't there!

Labour are unelectable. So are the Tories and the Brexit Party for many people. Quite frankly, our whole political system is a shit show at the moment and has been for a number of years.

Re your initial point, Hunt wrote a book (well co-wrote) about privatising the NHS https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...et-replacement-direct-democracy-a6865306.html

As for Boris, there's enough evidence out there that he doesn't believe in a free NHS although that evidence is harder to come by https://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2016/06/trust-bunch-brexiteers-nhs-nhssaferin/

Add all of this to the current Trump factor - a right wing American politician who we'll arguably need onside post-Brexit when we've annoyed the rest of Europe (and probably the world), and it doesn't take much to see that the NHS is currently up for grabs.

 

[A1X]

Are they against the NHS?

Jeremy Hunt co-authored a book which called for the full privatisation of the NHS and replacement with private medical insurance.

 

[El Presidente]

I'm afraid I'm in Southampton/New Forest this weekend looking at universities, so not in Reigate. Something that'll cost my son and I £20k thanks to you Tories. Yes, I know there is a good argument for paying your own way, but if you could just explain what has happened to that £20k I'd be grateful.

I’m totally opposed to university fees as IMO if the state invests in free higher education the state benefits from a smarter, more highly skilled and more flexible workforce that earns more money & therefore pays more income and spending taxes but...

If your son/daughter is taking a medical/science/engineering/veterinary degree then they are getting it at a significant discount compared to the cost of delivering the course. If it’s a humanities course the opposite is true and the fees effectively subsidising the aforementioned.

Repayment terms are very low (£9 a month on a salary of £27,000 a year) and is automatically written off after 30 years. About 42% of graduates will not repay the loans in full...which begs the question why have them in the first place?

The answer to this is down to the dark arts of accounting. If the government continued to fund the courses directly it would increase public sector borrowing. By using a loan scheme it kicked the public sector element of the funding off the PSBR until the loans are written off...although this ‘benefit’ has now evaporated following a change to the accounting rules.

What is spectacularly dumb of the government is the proposal to make it more difficult for overseas students to attend HE in the UK. I’m involved with an MBA course at Henley that’s being suspended due to a collapse in applications from well qualified overseas students, especially those from the EU...I wonder why that is the case?

I’m yet to hear a coherent argument why making it more difficult for foreign students to pay £20-30,000 a year to attend postgraduate courses in the UK is a good thing from Brexiteers, and why redundancies in HE (we’ve had 200 where I lecture) are a shining example of ‘taking back control’.

Back to your original point, it’s a dumb dumb policy to create barriers to entry for young people to enhance their education and also skews the market away from allowing kids from working class families to use education as a stepping stone in their lives and careers. The Conservative party don’t want oiks attending Uni because they believe it should be the preserve of the privileged and the Brexit party don’t want anyone going to Uni because only 1% of UKIP supporters (from whom they’ve taken a lot of support) went there and if a non HE life is good enough for them it’s good enough for many more.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

No we don't. The French system is nowhere near as good as ours. According to our French relatives, you have to pay for some treatments and then claim it back - which is predictably awkward. God help you if you are vulnerable and without support.

I'm sure there are tweaks we could make, but I'd rather this was done from the position that the public service aspect trumps absolutely everything, including fairly trivial financial savings that some mixed funding shangri-la might provide.

I think it depends on what measures you use. For example, my son fell in while we were in rural France. I managed to get him a GP appointment in the local village within 4 hours ( cost €20 which I could have claimed back from the NHS ). The doctor got him a free hospital appointment for 7am the next morning ( we saw the doctor at 4pm ). Left the hospital at 8am with prescriptions for some drugs.

Now try doing that here on the NHS if you're not a UK resident .... or indeed if you are a UK resident !

 

[beorhthelm]

Back to your original point, it’s a dumb dumb policy to create barriers to entry for young people to enhance their education and also skews the market away from allowing kids from working class families to use education as a stepping stone in their lives and careers. The Conservative party don’t want oiks attending Uni because they believe it should be the preserve of the privileged and the Brexit party don’t want anyone going to Uni because only 1% of UKIP supporters (from whom they’ve taken a lot of support) went there and if a non HE life is good enough for them it’s good enough for many more.

everything made sense, but didnt the Conservatives start the policy of more university education by extending university status to polys? im sure they dont want oiks at Cambridge, St Andrews and Exeter, they are supposed to go to Anglia Ruskin, DeMontfort and Southbank.

 

[Triggaaar]

Equally I fear for its future in the hands of Johnson/Hunt as they wish to extend the creeping tide of private sector involvement, leaving just the non profitable elements in public ownership.

Indeed it's a concern given the candidates for our next PM. If Labour give us an electable leader, we can ditch Johnson/Hunt quickly.

 

[El Presidente]

everything made sense, but didnt the Conservatives start the policy of more university education by extending university status to polys? im sure they dont want oiks at Cambridge, St Andrews and Exeter, they are supposed to go to Anglia Ruskin, DeMontfort and Southbank.

Spot on!

 

[Weststander]

Not really an NHS matter, the following applies to all surgeons, wherever they work:

I’m watching an amazing doc on BBC2 just now, well worth a watch on iplayer.

An incredible orthopaedic surgeon is removing a prolapsed disc, in bits, embedded in a patient’s spinal cord. One error by a single mm and the patient will be paralysed for life. The surgeon admitted that some of his surgeries have given that worst outcome …. inevitable with these margins. Supported by a dozen fantastic colleagues in surgery.