Internal Policing & BBC, MU, NHS etc.

In the past few weeks, we have had a number of instances where “well known brands” seem to have got themselves tied in knots about the boundaries between “employee misdemeanours” and “potential crimes”.

• The BBC (and ITV before them and GBNews since), who have had employees indulge in “unwise but not criminal behaviours” possibly connected with their jobs,
• Manchester United, who had a (very valuable and talented match-winning) player involved in very nasty (and public) accusations of criminal behaviour outside work, which revolted many fans,
• The NHS, which seems to have harboured a child-killer, where clinicians who believed she may have been killing patients, kept their concerns within the NHS disciplinary process.
• Perhaps Downing Street should also be added to this list – multiple times?

There is a pattern.

Leaky Lockdown

The government has put those of us in England back into “lockdown”. It appears that the scientists have become apoplectic about the exponential growth in COVID cases and the impact on the NHS. Finally the Prime Minister has had to take notice after rejecting their advice for weeks.

And yet this is Lockdown Lite. So what is the purpose of this leaky lockdown?

Parliament and “The Will of The People”

Since the referendum the Government (or the hard Brexit elements of it) have found a new “respect” for “The Will of The People”. A respect so strong that they seem to be completely enslaved to it – provided of course that the “Will” in question is the Will expressed on 23rd June 2016.

It raises some interesting questions about The Primacy of the House of Commons.

Lies, Damned lies and Simplistics

We seem to be suffering from a lack of appropriate figures to inform key debates and consequently protagonists seem to package up any data in to sound-bite grenades that then get lobbed into public debate. An example is the debate over the “seven-day” NHS.

There are not enough doctors to run a seven-day NHS in England, according to a leading doctor.

In a speech on Tuesday, Royal College of Physicians president Prof Jane Dacre will warn ministers the issue must be addressed if their policy is to work.

She will highlight research that shows vacant posts are not being filled and gaps in rotas are being seen.
BBC News Website, 15 March 2016 | Not enough doctors for 7-day NHS, says Royal College head

This news report suffers in a number of ways:

• It is a “pre-announcement” – the actual news concerned has not happened yet so we cannot see the full context of the speech,
• It conflates two issues; the seven-day NHS and the current shortage of doctors.

It is the latter that currently most concerns me.

A Programme for the Majority?

Just imagine the following programme for government:

• Reform
  • A shake up of Westminster
  • Abolition of the House of Lords
  • A fair voting system
• Public Services
  • No tuition fees
  • Educational Maintenance Allowance including part-time college students
  • The NHS in public hands, halting the tide of NHS privatisation
  • Abolition of prescription charges
  • Explicit protection for the NHS on the face of the TTIP agreement
• Fairness
  • Pensions that protect our older people.
  • A decent welfare system that helps people into work
  • Eradication of working practices that have no place in a decent, modern economy
  • a Living Wage nation
  • Strengthening of the law against domestic abuse – speed up the court process, give more support to victims, and expand schemes to help offenders change their behaviour
  • Gender Equality: Removal of Systemic and institutional barriers – the pay gap, occupational segregation, a lack of affordable childcare and, sometimes, just outdated attitudes
• Other
  • No new generation of Trident nuclear weapons
  • Deficit reduction but not slash and burn austerity
  • Stay in Europe

If we could break the internal coalitions in the old elitist parties, could we envisage a parliamentary coalition to support this programme?

Burnham’s New Army of Nurses

Labour’s plans to recruit 20,000 more nurses by 2020. Few would disagree with the problem, but does Labour’s prescription adequately address the problem?

We will train, recruit and pay new NHS staff: 20,000 more nurses, getting the basics right with safe staffing in hospitals, and providing personalised care outside hospital to families with the greatest needs;
Labour Party : Time to Care Fund (accessed 22 March 2015)

“To recruit 20,000 more nurses by 2020” is inevitably a slogan – that is unfortunately the currency of election campaigns. But can we unpack the problem and the proposed solution?

Anachronisms – windmills for political bigots

something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, especially a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time
Dictionary.com : Anachronism

If you hear a politician saying “it’s anachronism – it should be abolished”, beware the political zealot.

NHS Waiting Times – Why?

I have to admit that I am a bit mystified by the current debate on NHS waiting times.

A re-think is needed on the waiting time target for routine operations as 18 weeks is too long for some patients, the new leader of UK surgeons says.
BBC News Website 10 July 2014 : Call to review waiting times for routine surgery

Maybe it’s because I have worked in manufacturing operations, but I do not understand the need for such excessive waiting times.

The N in NHS

The BBC’s Health correspondent, Nick Triggle, has written a blog post titled “Dropping the ‘N’ in NHS” in which he ponders:

… could the new boss of the NHS in England, Simon Stevens, be set to break the mould? Over the course of the past week – firstly in his interview with the Daily Telegraph and then in his speech to the NHS Confederation conference – one thing has stood out above everything else: his emphasis on the local.
…
Then this week he set out his vision in a little more detail to the conference of health managers. This is what he told the meeting in Liverpool: “We need different solutions for diverse communities. Horses for courses, not one-size fits all.”
BBC News Website: Dropping the ‘N’ in NHS

From this he questions the “N” in NHS – and fundamentally misunderstands what the N means.

Power to (some of) the people (from the people)

Democratic Audit publish a post today about “public engagement” in the NHS, saying:

The political consensus seems more settled than ever before on the idea that the more contributions the public make to services themselves, the better. Semantically at least there is very little to distinguish Ed Miliband’s commitment to “people powered public services”, from David Cameron’s “giving people the power to shape and design the public services they use” or Nick Clegg’s desire for “a more plural, diverse and personalised way of running our public services.”
Democratic Audit 3 June 2014: Patient power could be the driving force behind a revolution in the NHS

I am very doubtful about this new manifestation of “people power” – it is a slogan at best, a recipe for distortion at worst.