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There are many articles about Andrew Lansley repeatedly apologising to nurses for failing to effectively communicate his proposals to nurses following the Royal College of Nursing’s overwhelming vote of no confidence in his reforms yesterday. Ignoring the opposition of doctors and nurses unions – the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing – Lansley is still claiming that his reforms has the support of the majority of health workers.

Lansley and his associated privateers repeatedly present opposition to their plans to destroy the National Health Service (NHS) as a failure to properly communicate their intentions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The intention has always been to deceive and obscure the fact that they intend to destroy the National Health Service.

Take for example the intention to abolish Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). The Con-Dem – Conservative and Liberal-Democrat – government claim that they want to move commissioning to GPs (general practitioners, family doctors). PCTs are accountable while GPs are private for-profit organisations that will delegate commissioning to further private for-profit organisations. There is absolutely no benefit other than to private companies and governments that want to relieved of their responsibilities. Commissioning will be moved to unaccountable private companies. The suggestion ammendment that local councillors should take part on these commissioning boards is just a ridiculous, messy bodge.

Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband called for the bill to be rejected yesterday. The bill should be rejected in its entirety.

The Red Pepper article provides good background.

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Making sense of the ‘pause’ in Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill | Red Pepper

Colin Leys analyses the ammendments being proposed to the Coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill, and shows how campaigners can use the pause to defend the NHS.

The pause announced by Andrew Lansley in the parliamentary passage of the Health and Social Care Bill indicates the serious trouble that opposition to the Bill is causing the Coalition. It is intended to give a noticeably isolated Lansley time to find compromise amendments which will allow Cameron and himself to say they have responded to public opinion, to allow the Lib Dem leadership to say they have secured concessions, and to still allow Lansley and the private sector to replace the NHS as a comprehensive and universal service with a healthcare market.

Cameron now knows he has allowed a well-informed but tunnel-vision privatiser, who is close and deeply obligated to the private health industry, to push ahead with a bill that risks major electoral penalties. He will wait to see whether Lansley can buy off enough opposition. For both Lansley and Cameron the question is whether they can keep the Lib Dem leadership in the Coalition when the Lib Dem rank and file are pressing to make the defence of the NHS a final sticking-point.

The fact that the story has kept changing day by day shows that the task is seen as quite problematic. At first Lansley said there would be two months of ‘listening’. But he made it so clear that he meant we would be listening to him that the story then had to be changed to one in which he would do the listening, but only to health professionals; and then the idea occurred of listening only those likely to support the Bill. Cameron, accompanied by Lansley, personally announced the creation of a Listening Forum, consisting of patients as well as nurses and doctors. The Forum has since developed into a Futures Panel of five, to be assisted by a forum of 40 doctors, who in turn will listen to ‘grassroots GPs’ around England, and will be chaired by the outgoing chair of the Royal College of GPs (RCGP), Dr Field, a long-term proponent of marketisation.

A mantra that doesn’t wash / Comment / Home – Morning Star

The all but unanimous Royal College of Nursing vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans for the NHS in England ought to leave him with no recourse but to resign.

The RCN cannot be dismissed as an extremist politicised outfit, as the Tories and their allies may wish to do.

Historically it fights shy of political involvement and it has never before considered a confidence motion towards a health secretary.

The fact that only six out of nearly 500 RCN delegates opposed the motion indicates the extent of Lansley’s isolation.

Nurses not confident NHS reforms in England will deliver for patients – RCN

Nurses have today overwhelmingly expressed their lack of confidence in the handling of the proposed reforms of the NHS in England. The message came from RCN members from all four countries of the UK attending RCN Congress in Liverpool this week. Almost 99% of members voted in favour of the resolution “That this meeting of RCN Congress, in the light of Anne Milton’s Congress address, has no confidence in Andrew Lansley’s management of his coalition government’s NHS reforms”.

Commenting on the debate, RCN Scotland Director Theresa Fyffe said:

“The scale of support for this resolution is a reflection of many members’ passionate and honestly held concerns that the proposed reforms could destabilise the NHS in England.

“Nurses from all over the UK this morning sent a strong message that they are not confident NHS reforms in England will deliver for patients. Nurses care about the quality of services for patients, wherever those patients happen to live.

Andrew Lansley’s time is up – mirror.co.uk

The truly terrifying scale of the crisis facing the health service becomes clearer every day and that is before his hated reforms pass into law.

Spending watchdog the Audit Commission has given the latest glimpse of the NHS’s future under the Tories and their Lib Dem sidekicks.

Cash-strapped health chiefs are being told to pull the plug on a range of operations from removing wisdom teeth to whipping out tonsils.

The independent watchdog said that many experts believe the commonplace procedures are ineffective or inefficient, but it admits not all agree.

And it makes clear that the cost-cutting is needed because ministers are demanding £20billion in efficiency savings just as they are railroading through their reforms.

Lansley apologises for failing to explain NHS plans | Politics | The Guardian

Lansley apologises for failing to explain NHS plans

Health secretary says sorry to nurses, and expresses his commitment to maintaining a healthy NHS

Andrew Lansley coupled an apology to Britain’s nurses for failing to explain his health reforms with an impassioned statement of his commitment to the NHS.

Hours after the Royal College of Nursing voted 99% in favour of a motion of no confidence in him at the RCN congress in Liverpool, the health secretary told nurses that he would have voted with them if he thought his plans would undermine the health service.

“I did read what was said this morning and the result,” Lansley said shortly before holding a seminar with 60 nurses as part of the government’s “listening exercise” on the health and social care bill. “I’m sorry if what I’m setting out to do hasn’t communicated itself…Listening to the vote this morning, if I’ve not got that message across then I apologise.”

New Statesman – Video: Cameron slams “pointless reorganisation” of the NHS

The Prime Minister – then in opposition – addresses the Royal College of Nursing conference in 2009. [Lies and misrepresentation presenting the direct opposite of their intentions alert]

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Sub-lethal effects of pesticides on honeybees

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image of black bees
Black bees

I am uncertain about the claim to be the first research “to demonstrate the sub-lethal effects of pesticide residue exposure on honey bees” – I believe that there may be a growing body of research that demonstrates this.

Research expands understanding of bee health

Recently published research is the first to demonstrate the sub-lethal effects of pesticide residue exposure on honey bees, which play a critical role in the production of one third of the food that human’s consume.

The pesticides involved in Wu’s study include those used by beekeepers, growers and homeowners. They include miticides, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. The accumulation occurs because beekeepers reuse combs to save on the expense of replacement.

Some of the consequences to honey bees that Wu found were delayed larval development and a shortened adult lifespan, which can result indirectly in premature shifts in hive roles and foraging activity.

Shortened bee lifespans dramatically change the dynamic of a hive. According to Sheppard, foragers are the bees that provide pollination and bring food back to a hive.

“A bee’s life span as a forager is on average only the last eight days of its life,” he said. “This research shows that, if raised with pesticide residues in the brood comb, an individual’s foraging life span is shortened by four days, a 50 percent cut.”

If there are not sufficient foragers, the colony makes up the deficit by using younger bees that are not physiologically ready. The result is a negative cascade through the hive all the way down to the larval bees because individual nurse bees must prematurely move toward foraging behavior and stop feeding larvae, Sheppard said.

Continue ReadingSub-lethal effects of pesticides on honeybees

NHS news review

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The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has voted overwhelmingly that they have no confidence in Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s proposed ‘reforms’ of the National Health Service.

Leader of the Opposition and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has made a speech calling for the bill to destroy the NHS to be abandoned.

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Nurses ‘no confidence’ in Andrew Lansley – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Nurses today voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion of “no confidence” in the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and his management of NHS reforms.

Delegates at the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool voted 99 per cent in favour of the motion, to 1 per cent against.

The RCN’s leadership had attempted to amend the motion to delay any no confidence vote until after the conclusion of the Government’s listening exercise.

But amid angry and passionate scenes on the conference floor the amendment was dropped when nurse after nurse took to the stage to condemn the Government.

Royal College of Nursing passes vote of no confidence in Andrew Lansley | Society | guardian.co.uk

Conference delegates vote 99% in favour of motion as health secretary struggles to persuade public of merits of NHS reforms

The Royal College of Nursing has overwhelmingly backed a motion of no confidence in Andrew Lansley’s handling of the NHS reforms.

Delegates at the RCN conference in Liverpool voted 99% in favour of the motion as the beleaguered health secretary struggles to persuade the public of the merits of his health reforms.

Nurses are angry that Lansley refused to deliver a keynote speech to the conference, opting instead to meet a group of around 60 nurses in Liverpool as part of the government’s “listening exercise” on the controversial reforms.

NHS reforms: Miliband urges government to scrap health bill | Society | guardian.co.uk

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has urged the government to “junk” its health bill, identifying five “largely concealed aspects” of the proposed reforms which he said undermined NHS principles.

“The answer to a bad bill is not to slow it down but it is to junk it,” Miliband said at a press conference on the NHS.

“He appears to believe that people don’t like his bill because his government haven’t explained it properly.

“But the opposite is true. The more people understand and hear about these proposals, the less they like them. It’s not a problem of public relations, it’s a problem of principle.

“The bill is actually a pandora’s box. The more people look at the detail, the more profound and worrying the implication appear to be for the NHS.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

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NHS privatisation

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

BBC News – Lansley faces confidence vote by nurses

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is facing a confidence vote from nurses in reaction to his planned changes for the NHS in England.

After a “listening exercise” at Downing Street with the PM and voluntary sector representatives, Mr Lansley will go to the Royal College of Nursing Congress.

He will meet a group of 50 nurses – not the whole conference – which has prompted some to question his nerve.

Nurses accuse Lansley of ducking out of facing them – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Nurses’ leaders will today debate a motion of no-confidence in the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley – just hours before he arrives at their annual congress to take part in a “listening exercise”.

In a sign that ministerial attempts to reassure nurses about their plans for NHS reform are failing, members of the Royal College of Nursing voted overwhelmingly to debate the emergency motion shortly after being addressed by the Health minister Anne Milton. If passed it will be the first such no-confidence motion in 30 years.

Tomorrow they will vote on plans for industrial action if the Government pushes ahead with proposals to allow trusts to implement incremental pay freezes for some staff. Members are particularly incensed that Mr Lansley will only be speaking to a selection of around 60 members, split up into tables of eight, for 45 minutes, and accused him of not having the “guts” to address the conference as a whole.

The NHS braces itself for privatisation | Society | The Guardian

Andrew Lansley‘s recent announcement that the government is embarking on a two-month “period of listening” about its NHS reform plans has been seen by some as a U-turn over a deeply flawed policy.

There are, however, some areas where the government is not prepared to listen: the commitment to abolish primary care trusts, to transfer major powers to commission services to GPs, and the ambition to vastly increase the participation of the private and, in theory, voluntary sectors in providing health services. In future, the NHS will continue to be funded from taxation and (for the time being) will be free at the point of delivery, but the government will step back from running the service.

Private sector involvement in the NHS is not new. Dentistry, worth £2.1bn, opticians and pharmacies are already in the private sector. GPs themselves are effectively private contractors, accounting for £8bn, or almost 10% of the entire NHS budget. Under Labour, private involvement was extended via independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs), handling mainly non-emergency elective treatments, as a way to bring down waiting lists.

But the current proposals are much more bold. Plans are under way to further outsource central services, such as workforce development (total budget £5bn) and procurement management. Even NHS Direct (worth £146m) is in the firing line.

The shift to create more than 200 GP consortiums in England will generate further opportunities for private firms. Notably, this will be in the management of commissioning, worth £1bn. Firms such as Tribal, Humana, United Health and Aetna already offer referral management services that promise to help consortiums slash their costs by as much as 15% and turn savings into profits.

London Ambulance Service axing 890 jobs in bid to cut budget by £53m | Metro.co.uk

Some 560 ‘frontline’ paramedic and technician posts will go in the capital as the service looks to slash its budget by £53million over five years.

A further 330 posts are to be removed from management and support services.

The cuts represent almost a fifth of the service’s 5,000 staff but the government insisted any savings made would be reinvested in patient care.

Pulse – GPs face bans on high-cost drugs

Exclusive: GPs are being banned from prescribing high-cost drugs approved by NICE as NHS managers seek drastic savings on prescribing budgets.

More than half of primary care organisations have brought in new blacklists within the past year, a Pulse investigation reveals.

PCOs are redrawing formularies in changes they estimate will slice £250m from this year’s drug budget. Responses from 134 PCOs under the Freedom of Information Act show that more than half have blacklists of drugs – in some trusts of more than 100 – that GPs are banned from prescribing.

Some 73 PCOs said they had added drugs to blacklists or placed additional restrictions on prescribing in primary care in the past year, as they strive to make average estimated savings in 2011/12 of £1.9m each.

Four-hour A&E waits rise by 65% (From Your Local Guardian)

The number of people waiting more than four hours in A&E has jumped 65% since the Government scrapped a target, NHS figures show.

Department of Health data on four-hour waits shows thousands more people waiting in A&E, walk-in centres and minor injury units in 2010 than in 2009.

Last June, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley relaxed a four-hour A&E target which has since been scrapped and replaced with a new set of quality indicators.

The data shows that, in the six months from July to December 2009, 176,522 people waited more than four hours, but this rose to 292,052 people from July to December 2010, a 65% increase.

NHS funding pressures hitting frontline, says A&E chief | Society | The Guardian

Hospital casualty departments are struggling to cope with growing demand for emergency care because they have too few staff and not enough beds, Britain’s top accident and emergency doctor has warned.

As new figures pointed to a steep rise in A&E waiting times and 890 ambulance jobs were lost, John Heyworth, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, joined a growing chorus of doctors warning that the NHS funding pressures are already hitting frontline services.

“The emergency care system is struggling to cope at the moment,” he said. “Many departments spend their time firefighting because of the number of patients coming in, the limited number of emergency department staff and limited availability of beds.”

David Cameron and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, have insisted that the NHS will not be affected by the deep cuts to public spending elsewhere and that frontline services will be protected during their shakeup of the health service.

But medical organisations, health charities and patients’ groups are increasingly sceptical that the pledge can be kept as health spending fails to keep pace with the rising cost of treating Britain’s ageing population.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review

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Nurses appreciate the severity of Con-Dem government attacks on the NHS and there is a weak hint of possible strike action. Nurses are in a particularly awkward position being committed to provide care for patients under the NHS system while that system is getting destroyed around them. To strike runs the risk of appearing insensitive to the needs of patients while perhaps even the act of balloting could hugely raise awareness of the Con-Dems brutal attacks. We need a strong, unified defence and doctors and nurses deserve widespread support.

Norman Lamb doesn’t really disagree with Nick Clegg after all. What a surprise (Not!).

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

BBC News – Nick Clegg: ‘Building blocks’ of NHS reform to remain

Deputy PM Nick Clegg says the “basic building blocks” of controversial NHS plans will remain, but changes could be made on how they work “in practice”.

His aide Norman Lamb threatened to quit over the “very risky” pace of change.

But Mr Clegg said Mr Lamb agreed with him and did not want to “reopen the Pandora’s Box” of the basic plan to give GPs more financial powers.

The plans would give GPs in England control of 60% of the NHS budget and let more private firms provide care.

What the cutbacks will mean on the NHS frontline | Society | guardian.co.uk

Don’t expect patients or hospital bosses to be happy as the cost of the NHS shake-up becomes clear, writes Denis Campbell

Andrew Lansley’s future prompts much speculation. Is the health secretary the Cabinet’s dead man walking or simply a well-intentioned NHS reformist who needs some presentational polish? Similarly, is the government’s hastily-conceived new “pause, listen and engage” approach to the planned NHS shake-up a prelude to a major overhaul or just a cynical exercise to keep the Lib Dems on board with warm words but minor changes? The answers, still unknowable, will help decide the fate of the health and social care bill – and perhaps the coalition itself.

But what keeps hospital bosses awake at night is not key elements of the bill such as GP-led commissioning, “any willing provider” or the exact remit of NHS economic regulator Monitor. Other, more pressing, matters do, almost all involving a pound sign. Like the “Nicholson challenge”, NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson’s demand that the service in England saves £20bn by 2015 in “efficiency gains”, requiring 4% annual productivity gains every year – which all the evidence suggests is hopelessly unrealistic. Like the reality of the next four years bringing flat or slightly reduced budgets after Labour’s decade-long cash splurge. It also applies to the 150 or so NHS primary care trusts, which currently commission treatment, and indeed to every healthcare organisation in England. Both have to be contended with at a time when demand for healthcare is growing.

Then there are, as King’s Fund chief economist Professor John Appleby points out, other key financial challenges to be met. January’s VAT increase will cost the NHS £250m, pay increments another £1bn and demographic change a further £1bn a year. Another £200m is going into the populist Cancer Drugs Fund. The transition costs of Lansley’s radical restructuring will be £500m this year alone. Hospitals’ income via the “tariff” payments system is reducing slightly. “All this means that local health budgets are under severe pressure”, says Appleby.

The Nuffield Trust, another health think-tank, adds several other factors for good measure. Medical inflation – the cost of drugs and clinical supplies – is rising faster than general inflation. Many hospitals’ operating costs are running ahead of budget. Demand on them – more people are using A&E, for example – is growing too. You get the picture — which, for the NHS, is grim.

Andrew Lansley’s future prompts much speculation. Is the health secretary the Cabinet’s dead man walking or simply a well-intentioned NHS reformist who needs some presentational polish? Similarly, is the government’s hastily-conceived new “pause, listen and engage” approach to the planned NHS shake-up a prelude to a major overhaul or just a cynical exercise to keep the Lib Dems on board with warm words but minor changes? The answers, still unknowable, will help decide the fate of the health and social care bill – and perhaps the coalition itself.

But what keeps hospital bosses awake at night is not key elements of the bill such as GP-led commissioning, “any willing provider” or the exact remit of NHS economic regulator Monitor. Other, more pressing, matters do, almost all involving a pound sign. Like the “Nicholson challenge”, NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson’s demand that the service in England saves £20bn by 2015 in “efficiency gains”, requiring 4% annual productivity gains every year – which all the evidence suggests is hopelessly unrealistic. Like the reality of the next four years bringing flat or slightly reduced budgets after Labour’s decade-long cash splurge. It also applies to the 150 or so NHS primary care trusts, which currently commission treatment, and indeed to every healthcare organisation in England. Both have to be contended with at a time when demand for healthcare is growing.

Then there are, as King’s Fund chief economist Professor John Appleby points out, other key financial challenges to be met. January’s VAT increase will cost the NHS £250m, pay increments another £1bn and demographic change a further £1bn a year. Another £200m is going into the populist Cancer Drugs Fund. The transition costs of Lansley’s radical restructuring will be £500m this year alone. Hospitals’ income via the “tariff” payments system is reducing slightly. “All this means that local health budgets are under severe pressure”, says Appleby.

The Nuffield Trust, another health think-tank, adds several other factors for good measure. Medical inflation – the cost of drugs and clinical supplies – is rising faster than general inflation. Many hospitals’ operating costs are running ahead of budget. Demand on them – more people are using A&E, for example – is growing too. You get the picture — which, for the NHS, is grim.

NHS shakeup could be biggest disaster in history of public services, says RCN | Society | The Guardian

The coalition government’s shakeup of the NHS could easily become “the biggest disaster in the history of our public services”, the leader of Britain’s 400,000 nurses has warned.

Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, made the claim in his address to the union’s annual congress on Monday as he set out a powerful critique of the planned radical restructuring in England.

While endorsing the health and social care bill’s key aims, Carter said “the reforms still have a huge number of areas that concern us”, despite recent government concessions on price competition between healthcare providers and its decision to invite a nurse to sit on the new NHS National Commissioning Board.

“Despite the honourable principles behind the bill, it could well turn out to be the biggest disaster in the history of our public services, if organisations like the RCN are not listened to now,” Carter told about 2,000 nurses’ representatives gathered in Liverpool.

NHS crisis looms say experts / Britain / Home – Morning Star

The Royal College of Nurses (RCN) warned today that the coalition’s NHS reforms could be the “biggest disaster in the history of our public services.”

RCN chief executive Peter Carter told delegates at the union’s annual conference in Liverpool that the reforms could be devastating if unions were not listened to.

“The Health and Social Care Bill is going through Parliament now and, from a government that promised no more top-down reorganisations, it certainly looks like one to me,” he said.

Mr Carter said that nurses were struggling due to the government’s two-year pay freeze, rising costs and increasing workloads.

He said “never before” had so many nurses talked to him about industrial action.

Speaking to journalists afterwards, Mr Carter said: “We are a long, long way away” from industrial action, and a process would need to be gone through, including balloting members.

He said nurses “would not damage patient care” by simply walking out of hospital wards.

NHS cuts push nursing union to the brink of industrial action – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Britain’s nurses yesterday raised the prospect of taking the first industrial action in their union’s history because of anger at government cuts to NHS services.

Nurses would refuse to work more than their contracted hours, take all their allotted meal breaks and decline to fill in paperwork outside their normal job description, under plans being discussed at the annual conference of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Liverpool.

The RCN’s general secretary, Peter Carter, said the union did not have a no-strike agreement, although he played down the threat of a full-scale walkout among its 400,000 members.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review

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It was reported recently that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley would break with convention and refuse to address the Royal College of Nurses Congress. It is now reported that he will meet a group of nurses in private at the congress – clearly with a view to avoid bad publicity for his intended destruction of the NHS.

The Royal College of Nurses have identified 40.000 job losses with 54% being in frontline staff.

I seem to have some strange bedfellows recently, linking to Blairite scum. I linked to this important document at a blog presented by Blue Ken and today I’m linking to John Rentokill and Parrot Tonee. Rentokill’s argument looks strangely familiar as if the traditional press has to keep up with bloggers keeping people informed. Notice for example recognition of the role of Bliar’s administration in privatising the NHS and the refutation of “doing nothing is not an option”.

There are suggestions that one of Clegg’s closest advisors Norman Lamb intends to resign if NHS reforms are not to his satisfaction. Spin.

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

‘Listening’ Lansley to meet nurses after all – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, yesterday reversed his decision to stay away from the annual conference of Britain’s 400,000 nurses.

Mr Lansley had previously turned down an invitation to attend the Royal College of Nursing’s Congress – prompting accusations that his promise to “listen” to health professional over NHS reforms was a “sham”.

But yesterday, after his planned absence was reported by The Independent, the Department of Health announced that he would go after all – as part of a “listening seminar”.

It is understood that Mr Lansley will meet a group of nurses, selected by the RCN, who will be able to put their concerns to the Health Secretary. However, he will still not take part, or address nurses, in the main conference hall. Instead the keynote government address will be given by Anne Milton, the most junior minister of the Health Department.

BBC News – Poor morale and job cuts threaten NHS reform, says RCN

Nurse leaders will warn this week that poor morale and job cuts threaten to derail the government’s reform programme of the NHS in England.

The issues will be key themes of the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference in Liverpool.

RCN leader Peter Carter has said nurses were being pushed to the limit, working extra hard to keep services going.

John Rentoul: It’s hard to diagnose confusion – John Rentoul, Commentators – The Independent

As George Orwell said, “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”. If only David Cameron had remembered that when Andrew Lansley persuaded him that he knew what he was doing to improve the NHS.

It is possible that the Secretary of State for Health has Jedi powers when speaking in private. That might explain why Cameron left him to it in opposition and guaranteed him his job in the Cabinet. It might explain why the senior Liberal Democrat delegation that went to “have it out” with him last month came away saying how impressed they were with his grasp of the situation.

BBC News – Union claims overworked nurses are ‘propping up’ NHS

Nurses are “propping up” the NHS by repeatedly working more hours than contracted and providing last-minute shift cover, a union has claimed.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Scotland said a survey of its members found just one in 10 felt there was enough staff where they worked.

The “snapshot” survey of 200 Scottish nurses was part of a UK-wide poll.

Royal College of Nursing Scotland released the figures on the eve of its annual congress.

Almost all nurses (96%) reported working in excess of their contracted hours, with more than a quarter (27%) saying they did this every shift.

Just 11% of respondents said that staffing levels at their place of work were quite good or very good, while more than a quarter said they provided last-minute cover for absentee staff at least fortnightly.

20,000 doctors and nurses to be cut as NHS feels the pain – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Controversial plans to reform the NHS suffered a double blow yesterday after a member of the Government threatened to resign over the proposals and new figures suggested up to 20,000 medical and nursing jobs could be lost as a result of cutbacks.

Norman Lamb, the chief political adviser to Nick Clegg and a government whip, said patient care could suffer because of the speed at which the changes were being introduced. “I’ve said that if it’s impossible for me to carry on in my position I will step down,” he said. “I don’t want to cause embarrassment but I feel very strongly about this issue… It would be a crying shame if we rush the reform process and got it wrong.”

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which is holding its annual congress this week in Liverpool, released new figures yesterday suggesting that more than 50 per cent of the planned jobs losses in the NHS will be clinical. So far the RCN has identified more than 40,000 NHS posts due to be lost over the next three years.

But in a survey of 21 NHS trusts, which between them are planning to cut nearly 10,000 jobs, the RCN discovered that 54 per cent were filled by clinical staff. The union said some roles were being downgraded. The Liverpool Women’s Hospital Trust is planning to cut 65 specialist nurse posts while introducing 48 staff nurse posts within its neonatal specialty. In Coventry and Warwickshire, managers are planning to reduce the number of registered nurses within learning disability services and increase the number of healthcare assistants.

More than half of NHS job cuts are on clinical frontline – RCN

The Royal College of Nursing has exposed the myth that NHS frontline care and services are protected, and says cuts will lead to ‘fewer services, fewer nurses and a worse NHS’.

As members from gather in Liverpool for the RCN’s annual Congress, the College warned cutting frontline posts could have ‘catastrophic consequences on patient safety and care’.

Evidence from 21 NHS trusts in England showed 54 per cent of nearly 10,000 posts due to be cut are frontline clinical posts. The RCN also found that nursing posts account for 46 per cent of identified workforce cuts.

The findings will put pressure on the Government to say how patient services will be protected, as trusts in England alone aim to save £20 billion by 2015.

Dr Peter Carter, RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary, said clinical staff were the ‘lifeblood of the NHS’ but were haemorrhaging at an alarming rate.

He said: “Many trusts are not being transparent by admitting to the proportion of clinical jobs being lost. From our research we now know the truth – the majority of job losses are frontline clinical jobs, the jobs that matter to patients.

Nick Clegg adviser threatens to resign over rush to reform NHS | Politics | The Guardian

David Cameron has been warned that he will have to endorse sweeping changes to the government’s planned NHS reforms when a senior adviser to Nick Clegg threatened to resign unless a series of demands are met.

Norman Lamb, a government whip who is the Liberal Democrat leader’s senior parliamentary adviser, said his party’s MPs and peers would be unable to support the health and social care bill if their concerns are ignored.

Lamb’s warning came as the British Medical Association claimed the tight NHS settlement, which will raise its budget in line with inflation, is leading to an “accelerating withdrawal of services”. Growing numbers of patients are being denied treatment for conditions such as infertility.

David Cameron’s well-oiled winning machine is now a car crash | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

A year ago running up to the election, everything they did looked clever, well oiled and pitch perfect. David Cameron’s electoral Rolls-Royce purred up to the winning post, his party’s reputation for wrecking the public realm left far behind. Likeable, reasonable and focus group-tuned to what the British wanted, he understood Labour’s legacy was a basic instinct for fairness. He knew the no-go zones – or so it seemed.

So why has he broken all his own rules in such a short time? Where did this appetite for random acts of revolutionary chaos come from? But above all, friend or foe, no one foresaw incompetence on such a scale. The saga of the NHS car crash is incomprehensible: his party seems at a loss, as ideology trumps political common sense. Cameron’s campaign – “I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS” – understood what was electorally totemic and radioactive for Tories.

No cuts? Former Tory health secretary Stephen Dorrell, powerful head of the commons health committee, warns yet again that no country ever attempted a 4% health cut in one year, let alone four years running. So what possessed Cameron to risk such cuts and lie about it, let alone to encourage Lansley’s simultaneous “revolution”? To advertise the NHS for sale to “any willing provider”, making Monitor open it to EU competition law, confirms every worst suspicion voters already held against his party.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

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Continue ReadingNHS news review

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I’ve got a little distracted here. I did intend to anounce some coming soon exclsive content about a flea or two in my head. Anyway you’ve ended up with some Cerys and Catatonia and two different verions of Hallelujah. I was looking for a version of Hallelujah by Cerys. I hope that perhaps she’ll do one.

I heard there was a secret code … but you don’t really care for magick, do you? It goes like this … Hallelujah.

While I am very proud of my Welsh origin, culture and traditions, I have respect for others and appreciate and embrace divesity.

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NHS news review

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Opendemocracy has a particularly enlightening article on the progression of privatisation of the NHS from the era of Tony Blair’s New Labour. This lecture, given at Goldsmiths College, is based on the book The Plot Against the NHS, by Colin Leys and Stewart Player, published on April 14th.

This very condensed account omits several major issues that are covered in the book Stewart Player and I have been working on. Among other things it omits the way the shift to a market has already been anticipated by the Department of Health, in dozens of initiatives and ‘pilots’. It omits the development of the private health industry, which is now on the verge of a dramatic expansion at the expense of the NHS budget. It omits fraud, which is so much part of the history of many of the companies involved, and which seems bound to become as endemic here as it is in the US and other healthcare markets.

But one question can’t be entirely omitted from even this brief account: how could the NHS be abolished as a public service without a debate and without the public knowing? The answer is really the story of what has become of democracy in the neoliberal age, condensed into a single case.  Spin, of course, has played a big part – secrecy, misrepresentation, manipulation of statistics, lies and the suppression of criticism. But even more important has been a radical change in the nature of government: in effect, the state itself has been privatised.

First, in terms of personnel, the boundary between the Department of Health and the health industry has become so permeable as to be almost non-existent. By 2006 only one career higher civil servant was left in the Department’s senior management team. The rest came chiefly from backgrounds in NHS management or the private sector. In addition, senior positions in the department were filled with personnel recruited directly from the private sector, while former department personnel (including two Secretaries of State) moved out to firms in the private sector. The revolving door has revolved faster in the Department of Health than in any other part of government except perhaps the Department of Defence. Conflict of interest has become so routine as to be almost unremarked. The idea of a boundary between the public and private sectors, which civil servants and ministers police in the public interest, has gone out of fashion.

Second, policy-making has been outsourced. This is an oversimplification, but not much. A so-called health policy community developed, structured especially around two main think tanks, the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Trust. The current Chief Executive of the Kings Fund was formerly director of strategy at the Department of Health, and so was the current vice chair of the board. Their governing bodies also have strong private sector representation and their seminars and conferences are where the market plans have been developed and disseminated. And this has been done partly at public expense, as these and many other think tanks, some of them militantly neoliberal, are charities, and so tax-funded.

Third, and particularly important in the run-up to the 2010 election, is the health industry lobby. Tamasin Cave and David Miller at Spinwatch have made a remarkable short film on the health lobby, called ‘The Health Industry Lobbying Tour’ which you can watch online at Spinwatch.org. When you have seen it you understand a lot more about Andrew Lansley and where his ideas are coming from.

 

The Health Industry Lobbying Tour from Mancha Productions on Vimeo.

I’ll leave it there. But just in case you are not convinced of the design behind this, and don’t think it is fair to call it a plot, let me add just one more item. In January there was a discussion on Radio 4 between Matthew Taylor, who was once Blair’s chief of staff, and Eamonn Butler, the Director of the Adam Smith Institute, where Tim Evans also works – same Tim Evans who negotiated the concordat with Milburn and looked forward to the NHS becoming just a kitemark. They were asked if they thought the NHS was really going to become ‘a mere franchise’. Butler replied, quite casually, ‘It’s been 20 years in the planning. I think they’ll do it.’

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

The NHS mess: A very big headache | The Economist

The farrago over NHS reforms risks making the government look impetuous and incompetent rather than bold

A POLITICAL scientist, John Kingdon, once listed three elements needed for bold policy-making. The right political leaders must be in place; they must have the right plan; and—vitally—they must agree on a problem that needs fixing. The confusion surrounding the government’s ambitious bid to reshape the National Health Service (NHS) offers ample evidence for the Kingdon thesis.

The Conservative-led government is in a bind over its proposals, which have run into opposition from health professionals and some Liberal Democrats (the Tories’ coalition partners). On April 6th a grave-faced David Cameron, flanked by his Lib Dem deputy Nick Clegg and the Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley, announced a two-month “listening exercise”, in which the government would seek suggestions for improving the plans.

The policy itself has proved predictably divisive since it was unveiled last summer. Though the individual changes are evolutionary, building on market-based reforms stretching back more than two decades, their cumulative impact and complexity stunned medical leaders. Sir David Nicholson, the health service’s chief executive, joked that the package was so ambitious “you could probably see it from space”. Yet the Conservatives fought the 2010 general election on a pledge to oppose further top-down reorganisations of the NHS, after years of disruptive management changes.

Mr Lansley’s plan would abolish a whole tier of NHS management, known as Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), transferring control over 60% of the NHS budget to consortiums of GPs (family doctors). One underlying political goal is to hand hard decisions about the rationing of care to GPs, the most trusted part of the health service.

A second big plank of the Lansley reforms would extend the scope of competition within the NHS’s internal market, launched in 1990 and expanded since to let private providers bid for work alongside state-run hospitals. Responding to complaints from the health sector and voters’ anxiety about “privatisation by the back door”, the government has pledged changes to stop private companies “cherry-picking” the easiest or most profitable cases, leaving NHS hospitals the expensive conditions and the cost of training doctors. Further concessions could tweak the membership of the spending bodies to be run by GPs, to include other clinicians and perhaps elected representatives.

On the NHS, Cameron, Clegg and Lansley listen – but will they act? | Sarah Boseley | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

David Cameron and Nick Clegg, together with Andrew Lansley, started listening at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey on Wednesday. At least – in their colour-coordinated dark suits with ties in shades of violet at three matching white lecterns – that’s what they said they were doing. They had come to a highly successful foundation trust hospital (close to London) at less than 24 hours’ notice to talk about the health and social care bill that nobody loves. During a “natural pause” in the progress of the bill through parliament, they want to listen, reflect and improve on the bill, they said.

Do they really? At Frimley Park, they did listen to the questions put to them mostly by consultants, all of which revealed genuine anxieties about the government plans. But the answers they gave suggested no hint of movement. This was a defence of the proposals – not a discussion of what might be wrong with them, let alone undertakings to change them substantially.

From my position in the audience, it looked as though Cameron and Clegg had decided that Lansley just needed help in explaining and selling the package. Every question was fielded first by Cameron and then Clegg, who both answered with reassuring generalities, before letting Lansley loose on the details – which he does in such a technical fashion that nobody can follow him. It was Clegg who homed in on the issue that most upset the Liberal Democrats ahead of their vote at the spring conference – privatisation. “There will be no privatisation of the NHS. The fact is that the private sector, charities, social enterprises, have always had a role in the health service … ever since it was founded,” he said. It was no, he added, “to allowing private companies to cherry-pick services”. It was no, too, to “a US-style health system where they check your credit card before they check your pulse”.

Health Secretary snubs ‘hostile’ nurse congress – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Andrew Lansley’s promise to “listen” to health professionals over his plans to reform the NHS was last night branded a sham after it emerged that he had turned down an invitation to attend the nurses’ annual conference.

Mr Lansley is expected to become the first Secretary of State or Prime Minister in eight years not to address the Royal College of Nurses Congress when it takes place next week in Liverpool.

Instead the Government plans to send the most junior minister of the Health Department – Anne Milton – to represent it.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review