Sunday 24 August 2008

ill, Sell your possesions to pay for treatment


Front page of the times today. Those of you who cannot bring yourselves to buy the Times, do go to the pub and look over someones shoulder.


Patients are being forced to sell their homes and cars to get the treatment they need. I could understand this in the past, but not under a labour government. It reinforces my move from Labour to Conservative. Sorry to the labour party, but the NHS is not safe in your hands.

3 comments:

The Great Daktari said...

But can you say the NHS will be better under the Tories?

Lets face it, if the NHS was a business it would have gone bust years ago.

But you are right Ken. It doesn't look like it's in safe hands at the moment.

Do we blame Gordon or Tony?

Interestingly did you know that an anagram of "Tony Blair PM" is "I'm Tory Plan B"?

Nemesis said...

Daktari

Every dept in an NHS hospital could suggest ideas to save money and deliver a better service.

The pursuit of excellence is strangled by the parallel departmentalist structure.

Back in 1985 the Chief tech (medical physics) would toddle along to me on a Friday and hiove me an RS electronics catalogue. We had to order 1500 quids worth of components per week (at random most of the time) in order to defend the budget.

One project I did was physio treatment machines. I put timer controllers on them. The mod worked out at say 100 quid per machine. We could easily have done that from our 1500 quid a week spares and project budget. But we didn't because that would have let on to physio that we had money to burn.

And physio then took a deep breath intake and claimed they could only afford one mod per month ....

(So they weren't letting on to us they had money to burn)

My predecssor in medical physics I divined (correctly) came from a family who owned TV shops. He had spent years buying TV spares with the 1500 quid a week spares and project budget.

The Chief tech asked me why I wasn't ordering the same stuff from RS as my predecessor. Then just in case someone spotted the abrupt change of purchasing practice we bought TV and video spares on a weekly reducing wean.

The physicists spent an inordinate amount of time making the oncologist and radiologists feel stupid compared to physicists.

Linear accelerator serviceability. Fantastic figures. Because 100% was based on it being available four weekdays 9 to 5.

Invest over a million in a machine and use it office hours four days per week. NHS !!

Working in Med Physics I was 35 quid a week worse off than being on dole. So I went off contracting on the steelworks at 736 quid a week. Altruism don't pay a mortgage.

Anonymous said...

You are saying, Councillor, that you could understand "having to pay" under a Tory Government, but not under Labour, which is why you turned coat.

Does this mean you are content with people having to pay, but not that a Labour Government should have generated it - as you (Daily mail style) believe it has?

I am even more confused about your political principles - or perhaps even more convinced you don't have any.