I get those points Paul which is why I said “properly resourced”. This thing is a maybe once in a generation or decade thing, it would be silly to resource for these events full time, but every fucking year we have stories of how overstretched the system is. How desperately ill people have to wait and wait for treatments that would alleviate suffering and pressure on other care sectors (such as what is left of those). Some of those people, who could have years of productive/useful life ahead of them don’t get the treatment they need, as I’m sure everyone here is well aware of.
The NHS staff do a fantastic job, but just imagine what they could achieve!
There’s no slack in the system, none. Every fucking day it’s at it’s limit, the whole service is relying on massive amounts of overtime and agency staff. It’s just outrageous that a country as rich as the UK is under investing in its most wonderful post war achievement.
Worthy for sure, but Masham is small, remote, and wealthy - unless roaming gangs of bog-roll-less vagabonds rock-up, he’s pissing into the wind somewhat!
Oh they know well enough - they knew long before Covid19 arrived, but personal greed, habitual mendaciousness, and slavish adherence to political dogma means they will carry right-on running it down and piecemeal privatising it. Pork barrel politics - with that cunt Branson squealing at the trough (to brutally liquidise metaphors)…
Sadly (and seemingly, paradoxically) Covid19 will make it easier for them, 'cos once it’s over, people will actively want to forget. Think Winston Churchill after WW2 - voters couldn’t bin him off fast enough, they loved what he did, but they desperately wanted to forget the whole sorry shitshow…
Guy i worked with popped into Tesco this morning to get a paper. Usually it’s 24 hour but closed for restocking and opens at 6. He got there just before 6 to find a queue stretching all the way from the doors to the filling station.
Wankers
Mrs P dropped Daughter to school today and popped into reception to find out about Her going school next week. The school or any as far as the receptionist knows have had any instructions about what is happening. Didn’t think Marley’s school will be staying open. Just be a few schools that are a dumping ground!
Indeed. As far as I could tell on my most recent visit there was no headroom whatsoever. There were planned staff shortages on the ward (this was publicly displayed on the board), stories of equipment that couldn’t be relied on etc. And that was in early February when Covid-19 was not something to worry about…
Fuck knows how the NHS will cope. I have nothing but the highest of respect for the staff and their efforts. We are about to reap the rewards of a decade of neglect…
Daughter had her piano lesson yesterday. Her teacher is diabetic, and insisted on doing the lesson despite being relatively high risk. I thought that was bloody stupid, but it became clear on talking to her that she’s desperately worried about the money - her job is for a school, but as a music teacher there she only gets paid when there are lessons. She will have no income.
So thinking about it, I have decided that we need to let both her and the cleaner stop working for us, but we’ll continue to pay them as normal. It’s kinda the only decent thing to do.
I’d urge you all to think of the people that you employ or otherwise have financial relationships with, and work out the right thing to do. It’s unlikely that the government will do enough for these people.
Fingers crossed we’re about to do rather better than our serious level of under-spending merits, but maybe not as well as if we’d spent, say, the first-world per capita average. Which we haven’t.
Public sector provision of a service with essentially open-ended capability is always going to be seriously troubled by our unsuitable decision-making process (democracy). At the other extreme - an entirely private system - the decision-making is simple. If you can pay for it you can have it, except that without load-sharing there may not be enough of you to set ‘it’ (say proton-beam therapy for unusually difficult cancers) up in the first place. Private insurance schemes can spread the load, but the people running them will still set limits. The problem with a public sector scheme is one of acceptance. Humanity fundamentally accepts that no matter how inequitable it might seem, if an individual can’t afford something then they can’t have it (or at least can only have a fairly basic safety net). But once all direct personal payment for a treatment is taken out of the system we haven’t learnt to accept that some things are still unaffordable. If I am infertile then I may feel fertility treatment is justified. If I want to survive a few more months with my terminal cancer then I think the system should pay for Herceptin. If my toddler is still alive, albeit with ever-reducing consciousness and needing 24-hour critical care then we should throw the entire hospital’s resources at that, even though death is the certain outcome (death is the certain outcome for all of us isn’t it ?).
I believe that the NHS’s principles are far better than the alternatives. But I don’t know how it will ever be resourced sufficiently to meet the wishes of everyone. The doctors and nurses will always be pressured to do more.
So first the herd trampled into the supermarkets and stripped the shelves of paracetamol and loo roll. Then it started overbuying tinned foods and pasta/ rice etc.
Following the wisdom from Bojo about staying away from pubs, the local morons have now stripped the shelves of lager and beer (except those cans of ‘craft’ beer with wacky names and colourful tin designs - they don’t know wtf they are and don’t trust them). Half the wine has gone, starting with the boxed shit and all the cheap to mid priced bottles.
So the local isolation diet is likely to comprise of baked beans and tinned potatoes, with a bottle of San Miguel to wash down the tablets with. These are same cuntz that voted Leave of course.
