Comments on: Lancet editor and doctors write: The fight for our NHS goes on

By: Mark Struthers

Mark Struthers — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:44:20 +0000

The passing of the NHS Bill, the Budget, and other recent governmental cock-ups, have proved that the current British government is corrupt, cynical … and crap. The election of George Galloway is also pudding proof that the electorate think that there is little difference in the usual political alternative. And the appalling behaviour demonstrated in Science Betrayed (see link above) would seem to have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the ‘British Medical Establishment’ are just as crappy.

By: Mark Struthers

Mark Struthers — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:37:12 +0000

In writing ‘Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare’, John Ballatt and Penelope Campling have written an excellent book on the only reform of the NHS that was really needed. I expect Jonathan Tomlinson and Jacky Davis have read it, and even the editor of the Lancet, a pillar of the Medical Establishment, has probably read it too. I commend it to a wider audience.

The following is the product description from Amazon,

“Intelligent Kindness is a powerful new approach to healthcare reform. Ballatt and Campling argue that the NHS is a system that invites society to value and attend to its deepest common interests; it is a vital expression of community and one that can improve if society, patients and staff can reconnect to these deeper values. To do so will improve quality and patient experience, as well as morale, effectiveness, efficiency and value for money. Relentless regulatory and structural NHS reforms have failed to avert scandals and left many health service staff feeling alienated. Industrial and market approaches to reform, whatever their merits, urgently need to be balanced by an applied understanding of what motivates and assures compassionate practice. The authors examine this topic from a wide variety of perspectives, including psychoanalytic thinking, group relations, neuropsychology, social psychology and ethology. This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care, and offers advice as to what this approach means in practice.”

By: Mark Struthers

Mark Struthers — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:57:05 +0000

In a revealing BBC Radio 4 programme last year, listeners were told that the Lancet sits alongside the BMJ as one of the “twin pillars of the British Medical Establishment”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00zm328

The programme provided a unique insight into how the ‘twin pillars’ behave when government reputation and industrial interests are genuinely threatened. In my opinion, the view from the pillars was uniquely unpretty.

By: Mark Struthers

Mark Struthers — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:11:31 +0000

Farewell NHS: I’m very sorry you had to go. The NHS was a powerful symbol of national togetherness, of social cohesion, of solidarity, of cooperation, of people working together for the health of the individual and the common good. Goodbye: it was good to know you and I’m very sad to see you gone.

By: Susanna Rees

Susanna Rees — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:20:40 +0000

You could collect local data on waiting times in your town or village.

Publicise it on a well-konwn community website and ask local people (or younger members of their family) to update if they are experiencing a long wait.

Let local councillors / MPs / GPs know you are doing this. Write to the papers saying you are doing this. Put notices up near your local GP surgeries? In shop windows, on notice-boards, in local churches, let the public know that if they are experiencing long waiting times, there is a place, independent of DoH, that they can log this.

By: Giselle Williams

Giselle Williams — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:17:43 +0000

Oh, and by the way, Salisbury – how you getting on with that Risk Register?

I’ve figured out now who you are! You’re either a paid-for external at the DoH or you’re actually Lansley. Know how I got that? Because both of those almost unmentionably disreputable parties are always asking others to come up with the data, the qualifications, the research but your lot never do, do they?

My qualifications for spouting out against your comments are that you have been more rude than I could be about someone without knowing them, as you obviously didn’t when sending your nasty comments. Two can play at your little game!

My further qualifications for rubbishing your comments are that I am a citizen of England (although born in Scotland), I am nearly 65, I have paid my taxes all through my life and I am utterly disgusted at the way my rights as a citizen and voter have been shabbily stamped on by this disgusting and abject betrayal of democracy – exhibited by a bunch of LIARS.

By: Giselle Williams

Giselle Williams — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:09:54 +0000

Salisbury – I’ll speak for any person you’ve come on here to malign and misinform with your rubbish Tory/DrumLib propaganda.

1. How much are your earning out of the privatisation/dismantlement for profit of the ENGLISH NATIONAL Health Service?

2. What is the name of your Private Health Provider?

3. How much do you have to pay for this Private Health provision or, if it is at no “cost” because you are a connected or interested employee or investor, what is the amount of the Benefit in Kind of your provision?

4. If there is no Benefit in Kind of your Private Health provision here, because you are located for tax overseas, why are you here b*ggaring up the ENGLISH NATIONAL Health Service?

5. How old are you and how likely are you to require the facilities of the ENGLISH NATIONAL Health Service in the next 10 years? (Don’t bother to answer that question if you’re under 21 and immature so far).

6. Have you noticed lately that even the right wing press (apart of course from the unfortunately bowed and censored BBC with A Tory at it’s helm) is beginning to see through YOUR TORY/DRUMLIB PROPAGANDA?

Please forgive me for having a rant but the wonderful NHS where I live saved my life in A&E two weeks’ ago and I object strongly to the ENGLISH NATIONAL Health Service being laid wide open (after substantial improvements) to foreign and UK healthcare vultures such as (she spits!) KPMG’s Mark Britnell – the NHS will be shown no mercy and will become an insurance service, and McKinsey whose only purpose for existing is profit rather than people’s lives and welfare.

By: Time for civil disobedience

Time for civil disobedience — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 01:14:46 +0000

We have been down the Parliamentary road, and – as when 1 million-plus protested against the Iraq War – we were ignored. The best path open to us now is obstructing any changes and civil disobedience… Blockade Virgin Healthcare and all the other private companies jostling for a way in, for starters… A list needs to be compiled of targets and spread widely. History shows this is really the only way to achieve your aims. Oh, and, aside from the GPs stating their intention to stand on Save Our NHS tickets in a selection of places, what do Red Pepper readers think about the idea of fielding candidates in EVERY constituency as a broad-left replacement for Labour, who are selling us out all the way?

By: Dr chris burns-cox

Dr chris burns-cox — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:53:47 +0000

We need a central place to collect details from the public and professionals of any change in the way the NHS is working which is to the detriment of patients or the organisation.
Perhaps 38 degrees would be the right place but this needs to be discussed and publicised NOW.
Certainly this needs to be from the date of the passage of the bill but it could be debated that we should analyse deterioration in the service from the start of the Enthoven-Thatcher-Clarke erosions or perhaps merely from the date of the last general election.

By: Caroline Milford

Caroline Milford — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:34:30 +0000

One of the most appalling aspects of the coalition’s mendacity over this issue has been the dismissal of expert medical opinion as ‘vested interests’ and ‘self interest’, elements of the right wing electorate’s willingness to accept this lie and the population’s gullibility in believing that carpetbaggers like McKinsey are going to put patient care before profit. It is a national disgrace. Inasmuch as I had ever considered the integrity of the medical profession as a whole, I now rate it more highly than ever.

I just hope and pray that those GPS who have pledged to stand against coalition MPs are true to their word because I stand ready to assist in any way I can, as do many of my acquaintance.

I will bang the table when these vested interests are unseated from Parliament.