NHS Reform

The NHS, say GP's doesn't need reform. Well, actually they aren't saying that, just that the entire reform package currently proposed is wrong. Can that really be true? Bearing in mind the stunning rate at which the NHS is now killing people, has some reforming zealot MP only come up with things that will make it worse?

Despite being very careful to recruit large numbers of Managers, who are constantly in receipt of helpful advice in the form of reports about how exactly they managed to kill a specific person (or group of people recently) and how they might avoid it in future, management ineptitude in the organisation trundles on at a high level. GP's say the reforms will damage joined up healthcare, but it doesn't exist now so what are they wittering on about?

At the base of it all, you get the distinct impression that all of these objections to change are about money. What did GP's do when offered a massive pay rise by Blair? Took it and voted for him. Bonuses to do the night cover you have always done? No thanks, they said, what with the doubling of my salary I'll forgo the bit extra and all the hassle (work) that goes with it.

Recently, courses were run using first year medical students to teach GP's resuscitation techniques. Personally, I would have hoped they would have been up to speed on such stuff, you know, joined up heathcare -sick people come to see you, possibly collapsing etc. I wonder what else they are a bit hazy on?

We know that an unworkable bureaucracy has been allowed to thrive within the NHS and this needs fundamental reform, but also the attitudes and functioning of the medical class has also gone awry. Doctors seem to make a lot of mistakes these days, nurses having been given higher levels of training no longer remember how to feed people, or that hydration is important. Patients are not treated as people with medical problems, they are paperwork in a process.

My own experience of the compartmentalised approach to medicine that is practised in our NHS is that, if they think you have cancer they will spend months trying to prove it is, then finding it isn't they will pass you on to another specialism, to let them have a go at finding what is wrong with you. The patients welfare, let alone life are irrelevant in this system, as the only interest is in going through the motions.

The reform that is really needed is radical and at a fundamental level; we must address the culture of the organisation. A culture that now opposes reform stating patient care, but is actually solely motivated by self interest. The NHS is not a bad idea, just a very bad organisation from its roots.

The Way Of The World

There used to be a simple notion. The people elected politicians who, generally did what was expected of them or they were voted out. Industry was given the incentive to do things by the mass of buyers choosing their product. Today things are rather different.

Big money attracts the attention of politicians and elections are some kind of ritual farce. Retail policy is derived by asking big retail how the sector should look; strangely it favours big companies. Turkeys are asked their views on Christmas. The people pay for what they get (or if it is a government service, that they often don't get) not what they want.

Man made global warming is a scam; the scientists who back it are either ideologically locked in or support the theory because their funds rely on it. But we should be earnestly looking for replacement energy sources, different ways of doing things. The emissions may not be doing what the idiots think, but aren't good anyway. But can you say that any real effort is being expended? Not if the pathetic 'electric car' is the best we can do.

These things wouldn't have been considered working prototypes years ago, but so depleted is our knowledge that car manufacturers churn them out as if they are viable and on the whole, we seem to believe them. An electric car with a 100 mile range. Whoopee! Except, what if it is night time and I need the lights on? And winter so I also need the wipers and blower on and where do I get heat from? I'm guessing we could now perhaps manage a couple of hundred yards.

We need politicians who think the electorate are their masters not the money of big business. We need a complete reversal of current warped thinking and to do that we need finally to get the left liberal monkey off our back.