What could we do with 4 Billion quid ? (R/E) sum total of PPE being burnt

[spread-tee]

Don't get me wrong BTB, the NHS is the best thing about our country, what grinds my gears is how the GOVT deliberately underfund it, along with other public services, and all the while the venture capitalist circle until bits of it WILL get flogged off. Indeed it is already happening, and meanwhile highly qualified staff are forced to visit foodbanks to make ends meet. This is the price of 30 years plus of austerity, could you afford to buy now the first house you purchased back in the early 80s? I know housing is an extreme example but more and more normal stuff is becoming unaffordable to ordinary folks.

Rant over

Desp

[Stinsy]

Don't get me wrong BTB, the NHS is the best thing about our country, what grinds my gears is how the GOVT deliberately underfund it, along with other public services, and all the while the venture capitalist circle until bits of it WILL get flogged off. Indeed it is already happening, and meanwhile highly qualified staff are forced to visit foodbanks to make ends meet. This is the price of 30 years plus of austerity, could you afford to buy now the first house you purchased back in the early 80s? I know housing is an extreme example but more and more normal stuff is becoming unaffordable to ordinary folks.

Rant over

Desp

A nurse with 5 years experience earns c. £30k a year before overtime. I can’t see how someone on £30k would use a food bank, that is just ridiculous. Question things before you repeat them.

[Mr Gus]

Think stinsy, think.

If your hospital is in a city (consider the small cottage hospitals all but gone) then for instance you move to the countryside to make your pay go further (from some years of training better) then the hospital moves miles down the road, adding several hours per day to your 12 hour+ shift, in the expensive city, London, Cambridge, & you've got to deal with the chaotic house prices that go with it.

Better pay being a tube driver & getting a free pass on the train to your job than car parks that aren't secure, long miles to your job due to the place moving due to "percieved image" from profitable to in deby via the PCP (or whatever), pleas to come into work on your day off, or after you've just finished a night shift having driven an hour to get home.

I'd prefer pay a nurse than many a copper.

Oh yeah, a properly trained "old school" nurse with shedloads of experience is worth nothing in the eyes of the modern system (stupidly) they want them to retrain all over again to stand equal to newer qualified nursing staff, ..its ballhooks mate.

Years of little or no pay rise, nursing association mandatory fee's for frick all support (a tax in essence) means pay cuts, it has been like that for decades. ..also your "pin" & the liability that comes with it, forced to do stuff that then go's to the board by the hospital in the first place, ..you are professionally screwed, whistle blowers get chopped down, ..that includes complaining on social media.

Rampant bullying by senior staff, mate you really would ask for more to balance the cr@p out.

[spread-tee]

Don't get me wrong BTB, the NHS is the best thing about our country, what grinds my gears is how the GOVT deliberately underfund it, along with other public services, and all the while the venture capitalist circle until bits of it WILL get flogged off. Indeed it is already happening, and meanwhile highly qualified staff are forced to visit foodbanks to make ends meet. This is the price of 30 years plus of austerity, could you afford to buy now the first house you purchased back in the early 80s? I know housing is an extreme example but more and more normal stuff is becoming unaffordable to ordinary folks.

Rant over

Desp

A nurse with 5 years experience earns c. £30k a year before overtime. I can’t see how someone on £30k would use a food bank, that is just ridiculous. Question things before you repeat them.

Do you honestly think an experienced nurse is worth just 30K a year, and how is that a living wage nowdays given housing costs etc. Perhaps you should think before getting sarky

Desp

[Bugtownboy]

May be relevant, dunno. About 3/4 years ago, I had what the Surgeon called ‘major surgery’. Post op, I was looked after by a Spanish trained nurse, an Afghan refugee trainee nurse and other non-U.K. staff flitting about.

A nurse, or anyone else in a PAM (profession allied to medicine), will have done at least one year ‘on the job’ training post graduation with a relevant degree. Nursing is slightly different, I think, as ‘on the job’ constitutes part of their degree.

‘Five years experience’ should be counted as post graduate experience.

My point, got there in the end, if it’s an easy job for £30K, why can’t we attract more U.K. people ? Why are we poaching staff from overseas - EU a few years ago, now Phillipines or the Sub-Continent.

OK, not all nursing roles are equivalent, usually their pay reflects the complexity and responsibility/independence within their role.

[spread-tee]

I think it is far from easy as jobs go and vastly undervalued, for a similar investment in training/education/gaining experience a lot of folk can get a better paid job without the stress and emotional grief that goes with nursing and related jobs. 30K/yr is no good in terms of buying a house certainly in the South east and probably many other areas which probably puts many brits off taking it up as a career, some of the foreign nurses I came across when my mum was in and out of hospital were here to get trained and experienced for a few years then planned to go back home. I don't know how widespread that is but I suspect it is more than just a few.

Sorry Gus, gone a bit off topic here

Desp

[Mr Gus]

When my multi disciplinary specialist nurse wife went to a new specialist hospital she liked the sound of (initially) for all her years & knowledge she was put on a naff band due to old school vs new school equivalent, & there it stayed. floating around "newly qualified" held back from promotion (too many nurses leaving, denied further training, all sorts, patients hitting her, not listening screwed her back (scars to go with it) eventually sidelined to office, then the small staff needed that had over 100 years between them were got rid of (too expensive) for around 17 people with zero qualifications (pizza boy grade, who would not & could not argue safety, medical knowledge & need etc) ...it sucked.

Since leaving she's been highly sought after (she did not want to leave the nhs which is a vocation not a job) & is finally getting paid money that actually pays the bills after years of treading water.

She implemented a cost saving meds protocol (zero wastage) saving her hospital in excess of 250,000 p.a. which has been implemented elsewhere ..all the while as a held back, LOW GRADE, LOW PAID, nurse, by being multi discipline in a blinkered speciality hospital she was able to save patients & lawsuits ..not even a cup of coffee as a reward, or a thankyou.
Also bollocked for caring (& saving money spent on translation services, complaints from patients & families by spending time with frustrated folk who needed the details to allow ward staff to get on with the job, & filling holes for those whose language skills weren't necessarily even english as a second language.

Focus on the "wreck it & move on" bosses of hospitals if you want to improve things, the nurses are too busy being stressed out & falling apart, doing unpaid overtime & getting shat on (sometimes literally)

She's currently heading a specialist private healthcare unit which compared to her last job with another private healthcare company is a step down, she was able to advocate & resolve (sometimes paid sometimes not) & troubleshoot for social services, patients, stop specialists bullying en masse europeans whose language (for starters) is different & get treatment on track after 3 years of another specialist hospital ****ing around & causing all sorts of trouble, ..you need dedicated people, & you need to pay em.

You do need to remove a tier of overbearing a-hole govt asslicks & let nurses nurse, ...its a horribly callous "them & us" in many hospitals nowadays, with a minimal core of folk who deal with all levels of management & floor alike.

Nurses for all their qualifications are deemed on par with titanics engine room stokers to a lot of management who only come down under guard on the very odd occasion, utterly disconnected from their hospitals, bot allowed to be approached or spoken too, including a specialist one that's been on TV a lot & made "royal" recently. ..the one that my wife amongst others did not wish to treat the patient (they were begging folk to cover do overtime with the VIP) because her pin would have been on the line & they'd have been under investigation & wrung out by the hospital should the old blue blood have died... no joke.

[spread-tee]

Gus, it truly is a scandal how folks like your wife and many others are treated in this country (and others too I'm sure), it is no wonder our national productivity output is very low compared to others. Sadly the UK is getting worse, it's how "the market" treats people.

Desp

[Bugtownboy]

Son is a musician and has what has been called a Portfolio Career - part of that ‘portfolio’ is as a lecturer on a Master’s course at two music colleges.

Along with his colleagues, he’s on a zero hours contract - not by choice. The lack of security, ability to access a mortgage, sick or holiday pay is stressful.

I know some people like the flexibility of ZHC (why ?), but it always seems perverse and/or immoral to depend on a person for an aspect of a business but give them no commitment.

He has very specialist knowledge, so it isn’t like he could be easily replaced.

It’s another example of our ucked-up society.

[Mr Gus]

I will stick my neck out & say bullying is endemic in the NHS, with totally thought out & chosen to be ignored decisions to remain ignorant to for example a woman specialist whose aim was to belittle everyone to & beyond the point of tears, that over the years many staff made official complaints &/ or chose to walk, but no more than a quiet talking to on each occasion because she, her name, as a female specialist was of greater value than the sum of nursing staff of whom many would have cited her within the hospital as to another reason to leave.

if you have seen the recent bbc Surgeons at the edge, likely she'd have been on there pretending to be a caring human being, ..she would be cited as one of the main causes of stress & career change at both hospitals, a woman that in any other industry would be taken out of the equation, & big pay outs to the distressed parties, in the NHS silence because of the risk of "your pin" & blacklisting potential, within the nursing industry HR personnel would be put on gardening leave regularly until they rotated in enough malleable people to take the pay & bury the clear cases for action against her.
That was at the old hospital & the new "royal"

Too many managerial cooks & not enough nurses at management level being listened to as managers (out of uniform) because if they did, things would be safer for patients, & the bed blocking wouldn't be a callously done as it is by scared little easily manipulated proles.

Toxic environment but still better than the burden of debt that is the american private system, but the nhs is being chipped away & forced to dance to some sleazy tunes to keep itself staggering along & breathing.

Primary job, get rid of those that care (object to bad practise)

Thank god for the presence of J.R. at that place still, often the only reason folk who ought stay in hospital were not sent home prematurely in the effort to push numbers (not people)