Apologies if I killed the thread, happy to step out if anyone wants to fire away again
Reading the papers today is nauseating
Originally posted by @Sussexsaint
Apologies if I killed the thread, happy to step out if anyone wants to fire away again
The patient is alive and well.
Reading the papers today is nauseating
Yeah, that was a real smart move by the government.
“How’s about revealing the true nature of the press to an entire, highly educated profession?”
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Frankie B, on point once more (emphasis mine):
_ One of the worst things for doctors must be that, after seven years of study and then another decade of continuing professional exams, patients come in telling them they’re wrong after spending 20 minutes on Google. So imagine how doctors must feel about Jeremy Hunt, who hasn’t even had the decency to go on the internet. _
Consider how desperate these doctors are: so desperate that they want to talk to Jeremy Hunt. Surely even Hunt’s wife would rather spend a sleepless 72 hours gazing into a cracked open ribcage than talk to him. Hunt won’t speak to the doctors, even though doctors are the people who know how hospitals work. Hunt’s only other job was founding Hotcourses magazine: his areas of expertise are how to bulletpoint a list and make dog grooming look like a viable career change.
Of course, the strikers are saying this is about safety, not pay, as expecting to be paid a decent wage for a difficult and highly skilled job is now considered selfish. Surely expecting someone to work for free while people all around them are dying of cancer is only appropriate for the early stages of The X Factor. Sadly, Tories don’t understand why someone would stay in a job for decency and love when their mother was never around long enough to find out what language the nanny spoke.
The fact that Hunt co-wrote a book about how to dismantle the NHS makes him feel like a broad stroke in a heavy-handed satire. Even the name Jeremy Hunt is so redolent of upper-class brutality that it feels like he belongs in one of those Martin Amis books where working-class people are called things like Dave Rubbish and Billy Darts (No shade, Martin – I’m just a joke writer: I envy real writers, their metaphors and similes taking off into the imagination sky like big birds or something). Indeed, Jeremy Hunt is so overtly ridiculous that he might be best thought of as a sort of rodeo clown, put there simply there to distract the enraged public.
I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner. Hunt doesn’t understand the need to pay doctors – _ he’s part of a ruling class that doesn’t understand that the desire to cut someone open and rearrange their internal organs can come from a desire to help others, and not just because of insanity caused by hereditary syphilis. _
The government believes that death rates are going up because doctors are lazy, rather than because we’ve started making disabled people work on building sites. Indeed, death rates in the NHS are going up, albeit largely among doctors. From the steel mines where child slaves gather surgical steel, all the way up to senior doctors working 36 hours on no sleep, the most healthy people in the NHS are actually the patients. This is before we get to plans for bursaries to be withdrawn from student nurses, so that we’re now essentially asking them to pay to work. _ Student nurses are essential; not only are they a vital part of staffing hospitals, they’re usually the only people there able to smile at a dying patient without screaming: “TAKE ME WITH YOU!” _
Had to interupt here, PREACH FRANKIE!!
The real reason more people die at weekends is that British people have to be really sick to stay in hospital at the weekend, as hospitals tend not to have a bar. We have a fairly low proportion of people who are doctors, don’t plan to invest in training any more, and are too racist to import them. So we’re shuffling around the doctors we do have to the weekend, when not a lot of people are admitted, from the week, when it’s busy. This is part of a conscious strategy to run the service down to a point where privatisation can be sold to the public as a way of improving things.
_ Naturally, things won’t actually be improved; they’ll be sold to something like Virgin Health. Virgin can’t get the toilets to work on a train from Glasgow to London, so it’s time we encouraged it to branch out into something less challenging like transplant surgery. With the rate the NHS is being privatised, it won’t be long before consultations will be done via Skype with a doctor in Bangalore. Thank God we’re raising a generation who are so comfortable getting naked online. “I’m afraid it looks like you’ve had a stroke. No, my mistake – you’re just buffering.” _
When I was little, I was in hospital for a few days. The boy in the next bed was an officious little guy who took me on a tour of the ward. He’d sort of appointed himself as an auxiliary nurse and would help out around the place, tidying up the toys in the playroom, and giving all the nurses a very formal “Good Morning”, which always made me laugh. I got jelly and ice-cream one evening (I’d had my tonsils out) and they brought him some, too. Afterwards, he threw his spoon triumphantly into his plate and laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Then he tidied up and took our plates back to the trolley. What he meant by all this (we’d sit up at night talking and waiting for trains to go by in the distance) is that this was the first place he’d known any real kindness and he wished to return it. _ For most of us it will be the last place we know kindness. How sad that we have allowed it to fall into the hands of dreadful people who know no compassion at all, not even for themselves. _
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CassetteBoy strikes again.
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Whilst I appreciate the sentiment doesn’t this mean that Hunt wins?
New Zealand wins. Both Britain and Hunt lose.
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Yeah that’s the point.
The biggest losers, as always, are us. The average member of the population.
Don’t blame Dr Martin (heheh), tbh I’m surprised I haven’t been given a push to move abroad from the gf.
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For the last 5 years my mailbox has been hit daily by agencies in Aus and New Zealand trying to woo me to work there.
I can earn 2-3x what I earn here, see less than 1/3 of the punters a day that I see here and have no beurocracy, management jobs or government imposed hoop jumping. Small wonder that juniors are leaving in droves. And GPs. And Consultants.
The solution ? Well as far as General Practice is concerned its best not to address the issue of leaving by reviewing the slashing of our pension, the mental suggestion that we all work to 75 ( Most burn out before 55), the workload, the demand, the endless fucking red tape. Nope the ‘solution’ is to go and nick 5000 GPs from India. Genius. Short term solution to a self inflicted problem
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I’ve stayed out of this topic til now, as I simply didn’t feel anywhere near well informed enough to offer insightful comment. There are only so many things I can invest my little free time in investigating to try to discover the truth behind the ‘public presentation’ of them. And this one had been admittedly off my radar until I started to read through this thread.
In that light (and I’m sure this won’t be a popular view), I do feel a bit sorry for Chertsey here, in that I am sure he genuinely felt that he was indeed sharing an ‘informed’ opinion, having listened to what at first instance would appear an ‘unbiased’ radio report on the situation.
This is the huge problem in general – that the British public (and not only us, but same for so many countries) take the media at ‘face value’. But please remember – that Clarence Mitchell’s little team are busily beavering away behind the scenes (not only where British children ‘mysteriously disappear’ abroad – but in all walks of life.
One thing we can be sure of, is that wherever there is a situation in the public interest – the illustrious Government Media Monitoring Unit, will be hard at work “controlling what comes out in the media”. And what does “come out” – will be the version the government wants us to hear.
I’m sure that Chertsey was simply defending his belief in what he felt was true, having made at least some kind of attempt to look into things. Sadly, as is proved time and again, we simply cannot rely on the media to give us a fair and unbiased representation of the facts. If truth is what we seek, we must invest the quality of time and effort to investigate and discover it for ourselves.
I really appreciate the posts from Sussex and KRG giving personal inights into what is happening. I simply haven’t had the time to fact check any of this myself, hence my previous silence on the subject. I simply do not know enough to come to an informed opinion, so I’ve found it very valuable to hear the perspectives of those with an inside track on things.
Thanks for your efforts guys, and all who have done the research and shared important snippets of information in here.
I feel I have a clearer understand of the real issues now than I did before.
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Originally posted by @Jack-Schitt
I’ve stayed out of this topic til now, as I simply didn’t feel anywhere near well informed enough to offer insightful comment.
that kind of attitude could finish the frm srs.
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I’m full of them Bear. 
You might think I’m a nutter, but it would be more boring without me here to amuse you. 
I don’t know about that. You have just written essay saying that you have nothing to contribute.
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Haha. A fair hit.
My post was really just in thanks to those who have.
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A long read but worth it
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That is indeed a good read.
A few days ago, Cherts was knocking the BMA, calling them liars and suchlike. This was all based on an interview with Radio 5Live, that went out during their DriveTime show. A link exists on this thread.
I ended up getting a little narked, and as it turned out, I ended up listening to the show to determine how close Cherts’ remembered account was to the record, posting my findings here. None of the doctors called the BMA liars, although all said that both sides had produced some misleading, one-sided information. That’s par for the course in industrial disputes, imo.
Turns out that one of these junior doctors, the most critical, doesn’t actually have any junior doctoring professional experience. He’s about to embark on his first year of work under the new contract.
How the fuck did this guy get picked for the interviews?
Why is this in the news? 
“I’m an FY1 doctor, with a huge interest in politics and healthcare policy”. What is “FY1”? Ah well. “FY” stands for Foundation Year: Adam Dalby is in his first year after graduating, but has not yet acquired sufficient experience to be let loose on his own. He’s the kind of doctor you might find “sitting in” with registrars or consultants when you visit the local hospital’s outpatients’ department.
Worse, he appears not to have set out on that road just yet. The_Telegraph_ and Sun have effectively admitted that when they tell “He is shortly to move to Yorkshire, where he will work under the Government’s new contract”. Will work. But not “does work” or “has worked”. But he is an “associate consultant” to “a boutique consulting firm based in Northern Ireland” specialising in “leadership, personal productivity, team productivity, customer service excellence, communication & engagement”.
Moreover, “Adam was the Lead of the Communications/Think Tank Workstream at the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management’s (FMLM) Medical Student Group (MSG) and has previously been the Transitional Lead of the Recruitment and Engagement Workstream”. But he appears to have zero experience as an actual junior doctor.
An FY1 is a valid junior doctor, a few years back they were called JHO’s or Junior house officers.
They have still done 6 years of training - most of the ast 3 working daily on wards treating people. His opinion is as valid as anyones