A Matter Of Life And Death

Pariah Of The Week.
Health Secretary Jeremy Prunt (I think that’s his name), the millionaire politician who billed the UK taxpayer £2,500 for Mandarin lessons so he could talk to his Chinese bride.
He blames the current state of the NHS on Labour, who invested billions under Gordon Brown.
The cheek of the man!
Eleven hospitals are in “special measures” because of excess deaths since the Tory-led government came in and began sacking nurses.
You’d have to be several sandwiches short of a picnic to believe this dogma-driven privatiser of the NHS.
( Paul Routledge, 19.07.2013 )

The Cruel NHS Management Regime.
The most macabre aspect of the NHS Liverpool Care Pathway for dying patients, now being phased out, was the cash incentive.
Hospitals were actually paid to put terminally ill men and women on this cruel regime, which often led to a painful end and deep distress for their loved ones.
These gruesome bribes for withdrawing treatment, even drinks of water, to hasten patients’ deaths have been scrapped overnight.
I can’t understand how anyone running a hospital could contemplate taking cash for cruelty.
But that’s NHS management for you.
( Paul Routledge, 19.07.2013 )

A Disgraceful Campaign To Undermine The NHS.
David Cameron and his unhealthy sidekick Jeremy Hunt will come to regret smearing the NHS.
The disreputable Conservative Government’s guilty of orchestrating a disgraceful campaign to undermine the biggest life-saver in Britain.
Supporters of the NHS, and I count myself as one, have nothing to gain and much to lose by ignoring failings.
For us and our families the NHS is, after all, a matter of life and death.
But Tories are deliberately magnifying every error and ignoring successes to blacken the reputation of our country’s most cherished institution.
Suddenly every nurse is seen as a potential killer, every doctor as a threat to the nation’s wellbeing.
The barrage of abuse is a smokescreen to obscure the chaos created by a broken spending pledge and costly bureaucratic upheaval in England.
The David Cameron who claimed the NHS was safe in his hands has shut units and hospitals he promised to keep open.
Promised extra staff never materialised, with posts instead axed.
The 111 service that replaced NHS Direct is a sick joke.
While behind the scenes Cameron and Hunt, a Cabinet minister who strained to deliver BSkyB into total control of media-tycoon-turned-police-supergrass Rupert Murdoch, carve up the NHS into bite-sized chunks for privatisation.
Cameron and Hunt are taking people for fools.
( Kevin Maguire, 29.07.2013 )

All The Current Problems In The NHS Can Be Traced To Money.
Once you turn the NHS into a business, as the Tories have done (with help from New Labour) scandals like the North Staffordshire hospital deaths become inevitable.
All the current ills of the health service can be traced to money, whether it’s the failure of the 111 helpline, the crisis in A&E or the looming bankruptcy of Foundation Trusts.
Health minister Lord Howe, an ex-banker, said the 111 providers who walked away “got their sums wrong, which is very disappointing”.
Disappointing!
That’s the limit of their understanding.
When profit comes through the door, caring goes out the window.
Managers sack nurses and outsource services to private firms so they can pay themselves more than the Prime Minister.
It may be too late to save our health service.
It could be irrevocably damaged before we can send the Tories packing.
( Paul Routledge, 02.08.2013 )

Number Of Doctors And Nurses Trained Are Capped By The Government.
We are being told constantly that the NHS would grind to a halt were it not for foreign workers.
However, this is not surprising when the number of doctors and nurses trained in this country are capped by the Government.
Many of our young people choosing to enter these professions are blocked by restrictions on the numbers accepted for training.
This leaves NHS employers no alternative other than to go outside this country to recruit staff.
This is a disgrace when we have so many of our own young people unemployed.
It is not the fault of the foreign workers.
Our own Government has created this situation, and it causes undeserved resentment of immigrants.
( Terry Durrance, 08.09.2013 )

Middle-Aged Professional Women Are Heavy Drinkers.
Recent research has found that middle-class women are twice as likely to be heavy drinkers as any other sector of society.
According to the Office for National Statistics, almost one in five of us drinks to excess.
Just lately, we discovered that middle-aged professional women are for the first time consuming more alcohol than teenage drinkers – and experts warn that older women are becoming the greatest burden on the NHS due to alcohol-related conditions, including stroke, liver disease and cancer.
Not that we think too much about that when we top up the glass.
( Mimi Spencer )

A Ticking Time Bomb Of Alcohol Abuse.
Academics at the University of Sunderland described the middle classes as a ‘ticking time bomb’ of alcohol abuse.
Dr Jonathan Ling, the university’s senior lecturer in public health says, ‘The people who drink most regularly are not young and live in households where someone has a professional job.’
Department of Health figures show there were 110,128 alcohol-related hospital admissions for women aged 35 to 54 in England in 2010.
For women aged 15 to 34 there were 57,969 that year.
The General Lifestyle Survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics in 2010 revealed that almost 64% of women in managerial and professional roles had drunk alcohol in the previous week compared with just 44% of women who carried out manual work.

Drinking Beer Dulls The Brain.
A survey of Spanish students suggests that three pints of beer, drunk weekly in a single session, can significantly dull the brain.
On these figures, thousands must leave university measurably more stupid than when they arrived.
Truly heavy drinking is, of course, disastrous for the mind and the body.
Far too many young people drink to excess, and every effort should be made to discourage them.
But those who classify rather moderate drinking as risky tend to discredit their own cause.
Such unconvincing alarmism makes it too easy for the young to ignore sensible warnings, and so put themselves in grave danger.
( The Mail on Sunday, 07.07.2013 )