Politics

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, and is NON CH related - chat about the weather, or anything else that takes your fancy.

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loringa
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Re: Politics

Post by loringa »

sejintenej wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:52 am As for the list of services; where do you draw a line? some might say no more transplants, some may say no treatments devised after 1st January 2019; the entire concept is a minefield. New conditions are constantly being "discovered" and large sums set aside for research. New methods of treatment are being devised for long understood conditions (such as keyhole surgery)....... I don't have an answer and I suspect that the courts might start ordering treatments not otherwise available.
Stop cosmetic treatments? big problem there - think of severely injured burns patients - when do you stop trying to make them look normal? What about those otherwise normal people who decide that their nose shape is making them mentally ill unless it is reshaped?
This is, of course, the 64,000 dollar question (or one of them). As new treatments are discovered then I would assume that it would be for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or a similar body to advise on whether they should be adopted but once the Government of the day has accepted or rejected a NICE recommendation it would be for them to fund it appropriately across the country. Once adopted, however, it should be available to everyone regardless of where they live in England and Wales (NICE does not serve Scotland or Northern Ireland).

By limiting cosmetic treatments to those that are medically essential I would definitely include burns victims and anyone with clear clinical needs: cleft palates, severe disfigurement, post-operative damage, breast reduction etc. I would also include things like excess skin removal for those that have lost vast amounts of weight as I believe in rewarding people who do something positive. What I would not include is tattoo removal, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation etc just because the patient was claiming that his or her mental health was adversely affected. It may not be the case in reality but it does seem (to me) that the moment an individual plays the mental health card then too many GPs and even psychiatrists are prepared to 'go along' with it. Mental illness is not a badge of honour nor is it an excuse for bad behaviour or an easy way of getting something wanted but not needed. Mental illness is like physical illness; most people don't suffer from it most of the time but when it rears its ugly head it needs to be taken seriously and treated appropriately.
scrub
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Re: Politics

Post by scrub »

loringa wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 10:00 amThe Labour Party needs a new leader who can genuinely be for the many, not the few but she is not to be found in Islington. Any thoughts who it should be?
They'll have an uphill struggle finding one for a while yet. I think there'll be a huge gulf between who's deemed acceptable by the people who'll elect the next Labour leader and the wider UK electorate for the next couple of years. Starmer seems to be one best placed to fit that Blair-shaped gap that helped turn Labour of the 90's into a relentless vote-winning machine, but he's a centrist and a QC with a knighthood who went to Oxford, so Momentum will put the kibosh on that.
Nandy and Philips are both too young and too northern to win over the southern Tory seats they'd need. Thornberry has way too much baggage and by the next GE will be close to retirement age which will definitely be used against her. Cooper has even more baggage and would be internally unpopular with the hard left as well as being far too Scottish to help win the English seats. Long-Bailey and Rayner should be able to get the party behind them, they're left enough but not too left, but again have the dual problems of age and accent. They're also the softest targets for the inevitable dirty tricks campaigns. The prospect of Johnson vs Rayner is essentially a Cummings/Crosby-Textor Group wet dream.

As much of a muppet as Corbyn is, staying on as leader until the UK's MEPs clear their desks is probably the smartest thing he could do. Leave Brexit as a stain on his leadership and give the incoming leader a clean slate. Of course, this is Labour, so he'll probably do one a couple of weeks before then and hamstring the new bod by leaving all of that as their first order of business.
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sejintenej
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Re: Politics

Post by sejintenej »

loringa wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 12:09 pm
sejintenej wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:52 am As for the list of services; where do you draw a line?

This is, of course, the 64,000 dollar question (or one of them). As new treatments are discovered then I would assume that it would be for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) or a similar body to advise on whether they should be adopted but once the Government of the day has accepted or rejected a NICE recommendation it would be for them to fund it appropriately across the country. Once adopted, however, it should be available to everyone regardless of where they live in England and Wales (NICE does not serve Scotland or Northern Ireland).

By limiting cosmetic treatments to those that are medically essential I would definitely include burns victims and anyone with clear clinical needs: cleft palates, severe disfigurement, post-operative damage, breast reduction etc. I would also include things like excess skin removal for those that have lost vast amounts of weight as I believe in rewarding people who do something positive.
This latter I am not happy with. Getting obese is a choice that people make in that nutritional advice is available everywhere as is exercise advice; people do not need to become obese as the WWII diet proved. (OK a bit excessive but the principle .....).
Mental illness is not a badge of honour nor is it an excuse for bad behaviour or an easy way of getting something wanted but not needed. Mental illness is like physical illness; most people don't suffer from it most of the time but when it rears its ugly head it needs to be taken seriously and treated appropriately.
Again I am not convinced. Scitzophrenia (Sp?) is a lifelong condition needing medicines, the alternative being prison or otherwise putting them away permanently.
IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE DO NOT READ THE NEXT BIT

One part-time job I had was sorting out vehicle crashes. We regularly saw broken limbs, blood and gore, burns, the occasional beheading and it was our job to keep the victims and ourselves alive. I think traffic police go through the same.
I think it was through CCF and Dr Scott's training and also the training videos that I could handle it but we lost a large number of people through PTSD.
Please accept that the mental result is not a short term thing; it can be for the rest of life as I saw in one case and there seems to be little if any effective treatment except perhaps drugs.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
scrub
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Re: Politics

Post by scrub »

sejintenej wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:52 amAs for the list of services; where do you draw a line?
The research field I used to work in meant I spent a lot of time with industry, both pharma and biotech. One of the talks that has stuck with me was from a guy who was part of the NICE panel. As he put it "there will never be enough money, as soon as we 'cure' one thing, a dozen more need our attention". From memory, drugs take up 10% of the NHS budget, and cancer drugs take up 10% of that. In the next 20-30 years, along with all cancers, the demand for dementia, CVD, diabetes, and stroke treatments is set to surge (ageing population), so either spending goes up, or a lot of people die earlier than they otherwise could have. That's not hyperbole, just an unpleasant fact.

What I can see happening is a move towards the Aus system (UK politicians really love Aus ideas for some reason), where you have a dual public/private service occupying the same physical space. Anyone who earns above a certain amount either pays an extra Medicare (Aus NHS) levy, or they take out private insurance. You still see the same doctors and surgeons, but for elective and non-emergency procedures you jump the queue and get a slightly comfier room. A mate needed a full knee reconstruction, didn't have private cover, had to wait a year. With private cover - 2 weeks. My sister had her appendix out after it nearly burst, had surgery 8 hrs after coming into emergency. She had insurance, but didn't get a chance to tell them before she went under the knife. When she came round they told her that the only difference in care was that she'd be moved into a room on the floor above rather than the ward she was on, but seeing as she'd be discharged before they'd be able to get it ready, she may as well stay put.

It's not perfect, and it would only work in the UK if any NHS levy on higher earners actually went directly to the NHS rather than being used as another tax. Sadly, what I'd expect to see is a slow gutting of the public space to the point where it's less than a husk of what it should be.
sejintenej wrote: Sat Dec 14, 2019 11:52 amWhat I would suggest is a rule that nobody can get more than say 10 times as much a the lowest paid staff member - on an hourly basis.
As much as that would help matters and as part of a total reorganisation is both a sensible and workable solution, it's a guaranteed vote loser. These days, the suggestion of limiting the pay of senior management is seen as the worst form of Stalinism.
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loringa
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Re: Politics

Post by loringa »

sejintenej wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 1:57 pm
loringa wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 12:09 pm
Mental illness is not a badge of honour nor is it an excuse for bad behaviour or an easy way of getting something wanted but not needed. Mental illness is like physical illness; most people don't suffer from it most of the time but when it rears its ugly head it needs to be taken seriously and treated appropriately.
Again I am not convinced. Scitzophrenia (Sp?) is a lifelong condition needing medicines, the alternative being prison or otherwise putting them away permanently.
IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE DO NOT READ THE NEXT BIT

One part-time job I had was sorting out vehicle crashes. We regularly saw broken limbs, blood and gore, burns, the occasional beheading and it was our job to keep the victims and ourselves alive. I think traffic police go through the same.
I think it was through CCF and Dr Scott's training and also the training videos that I could handle it but we lost a large number of people through PTSD.
Please accept that the mental result is not a short term thing; it can be for the rest of life as I saw in one case and there seems to be little if any effective treatment except perhaps drugs.
Please do not misunderstand where I am coming from. Of course there are lifelong mental health issues such as schizophrenia which can be alleviated though not cured through medication and there will be a number of people suffering from mental health issues that are very real on either an ongoing or a short-term basis, just like any other medical condition. Your comment on PTSD, however, serves to emphasise the point I was trying, however inarticulately, to make. There are people: servicemen, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, survivors of extreme abuse etc who suffer a severe reaction to the horrors they have faced in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). That is the point: PTSD is a reaction to real trauma, it is not the inevitable consequence of something vaguely disturbing or unpleasant happening. Mostly, when something bad happens, we all just have to suck it up and get on with life as normal; nonetheless, everyone (at least everyone who is not a psychopath) will have a threshold beyond which they simply cannot carry on. The level of this threshold will vary from person to person but it must not be set too low or you diminish the effects on those who have suffered real trauma. My big concern is that claiming to suffer from mental issues becomes so universal that real problems are missed.
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

Post by J.R. »

My wife worked with schizophrenics as a project and support worker before retirement. She would be the first to tell you they are fine as long as the keep up their meds.

HOWEVER.... Funding for mental health care is now sadly lacking and many slip through the net.
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sejintenej
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Re: Politics

Post by sejintenej »

loringa wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:36 pm
Please do not misunderstand where I am coming from. Of course there are lifelong mental health issues such as schizophrenia which can be alleviated though not cured through medication and there will be a number of people suffering from mental health issues that are very real on either an ongoing or a short-term basis, just like any other medical condition. Your comment on PTSD, however, serves to emphasise the point I was trying, however inarticulately, to make. There are people: servicemen, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, survivors of extreme abuse etc who suffer a severe reaction to the horrors they have faced in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). That is the point: PTSD is a reaction to real trauma, it is not the inevitable consequence of something vaguely disturbing or unpleasant happening. Mostly, when something bad happens, we all just have to suck it up and get on with life as normal; nonetheless, everyone (at least everyone who is not a psychopath) will have a threshold beyond which they simply cannot carry on. The level of this threshold will vary from person to person but it must not be set too low or you diminish the effects on those who have suffered real trauma. My big concern is that claiming to suffer from mental issues becomes so universal that real problems are missed.
Andrew; I think that we are actually on the same wavelength.The difference is how we view Trauma. To me it is actual damage to the person rather than viewing it. We were effectively part of a worldwide body and at least UK qualifications were accepted from Australia via EU countries to the USA; I point that out because the score in one terrible month was 60 of us killed . To me the mental problem is the viewing of such things rather than being the recipient of injury. A broken leg is an obvious cause of trauma but the lady who saw two of my elderly friends knocked down a week ago - to A & E that is not treatable. The attacks by staff on CH pupils are a source of mental stress from which at least some are not recovering after specialist treatment.

The REAL problem for the experts is deciding what will go away untreated, what can be treated and what is untreatable and that requires getting to the real cause.
There is a doctor (possibly now a consultant) at Kings Lynn hospital who worked beside me for a few years - she knows what goes on and understands as do the doctors and paramedics whom we help - a tiny fraction of the UK medical profession and divorced from the curers.. How can the rest really understand what it is like to have a bullet pass inches away or a car fly over your head or a school teacher assault you sexually without experiencing those conditions?
Yes, Andrew; a major problem which would require great guts for the minister responsible.


As for your (or someone's reply about wages; a political problem but can a Trust boss work 10 hours a week and get 300,000 quid a year when a nurse with the lives of patients in his/her care work 48 to 60 hours a week and get £50000 a year ? On top of those hours she has 15 to 20 hours travelling time. My DIL has had to fight umpteen cases of angry patients accusing her of mistreatment to homicide and has won the lot. Going back the NHS ordered my wife to change her hours from nights to days so that our preschool children would be left alone all day. Wages would not cover a childminder. - the union backed the NHS so my wife was effectively sacked for looking after her children.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
sejintenej
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Re: Politics

Post by sejintenej »

J.R. wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 8:42 pm My wife worked with schizophrenics as a project and support worker before retirement. She would be the first to tell you they are fine as long as the keep up their meds.

HOWEVER.... Funding for mental health care is now sadly lacking and many slip through the net.
JR; you got the most important words "provided they keep up their meds". However the "pre-retirement" sufferers - well, you know what happens to many of them.

As for funding, in theory I agree. However I know one teacher of mentally handicapped children who gives horror stories of her better qualified bosses spending their time drinking tea and coffee in meetings and not seeing a single patient. I know one adult person who was sent for treatment and had to spend the entire time filling in questionnaires as to is she feeling sad, is she feeling better ....................?. and hardly a word spoken. Apparently the professional came across as a right bitch. The money might be short but what is available is not being properly spent on treatment
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

Anyone wondering who has all the money these days might take a look at the FT Weekend, the Sat/Sun edition which is actually a very good all-round read (a paywall unfortunately so you have to shell out for the print). They have a glossy supplement called "How To Spend It" which is an eye-opener. Last week's edition had the editor talking about the bright young things of the 20s in admiring fashion (there's an exhibition shortly at the V&A apparently. I was moved to send a letter which is published in today's edition. It may be of interest to all out there who enjoyed the 60s.

"Jo Ellison should exercise a bit of caution with her paean to conspicuous consumption. The term was devised by the American economist Thorstein Veblen to satirise the ludicrous and ostentatious dress and lifestyles of the uber-rich in the 1920s. The whole thing came undone in 1929 and JK Galbraith noted later that extremes of wealth always seemed to be one of the factors present at times of boom and bust.
" So has there been a time when the trendsetters and peacocks were closer to the rest of us? Yes, in 1967 you could go down Portobello Road and buy a colourful crushed velvet jacket knowing that Jimi Hendrix might well have been in to buy the same jacket at the same price. Those were the days."
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

How amusing to watch libertarian, laissez-faire Boris wriggling and squirming as he metamorphoses into Franklin D Roosevelt. Suddenly government has a role to play (Richard Branson, Mike Ashley and G4S eat your heart out). After ten years of cuts the health services and councils are struggling nobly to cope. Private health providers are having their heads banged together and told to co-operate.The BBC is thought to provide more independent news than the internet. Where will it end? Perhaps CH will be co-opted to house suffering patients. It'll look a bit like the great flu epidemic in the 50s when I found myself sleeping in isolated Maine A instead of my usual Col B. But watch out folks, we've got Brexit coming down the line after this. You lucky people, as a 50s comedian used to say. Tommy Trinder was it?
rockfreak
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

Little did I think when I innocently started the Politics site all those years ago that 78,000 people would come to view it, and that it would run to 48 pages (although of course some of that would have been fleshed out by the labyrinthine ramblings of Banker Brown). Ant and Dec would die for such ratings. Some call me a leftie (although they would be surprised by how many of Marx's ideas were long ago absorbed into Western democratic capitalism). I'm just surprised that the private school system is still flourishing (including CH with its increasing number of full fee payers and its international clientele). All serious educational analysts question its use and yet no-one ever quite gets to axe it. But Brexit is coming down the line - the elephant in the room down the line, I supposed you might say. All will be affected by it, from Sunderland when Nissan pulls out, to Christ's Hospital when food parcels to the poor and needy start running out. Something has to give. Why has the British public gone so silent on this? Is it bunker mentality? The Russians are at the gates, the cyanide capsule has been tested on the poor old Alsatian, the storm troopers are high on Benzedrine and marching up and down singing the Horstwezel Song, Hitler and Goebbels have made their suicide pact. The end is nigh.
AMP
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Re: Politics

Post by AMP »

rockfreak wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 8:56 pm Little did I think when I innocently started the Politics site all those years ago that 78,000 people would come to view it, and that it would run to 48 pages (although of course some of that would have been fleshed out by the labyrinthine ramblings of Banker Brown). Ant and Dec would die for such ratings. Some call me a leftie (although they would be surprised by how many of Marx's ideas were long ago absorbed into Western democratic capitalism). I'm just surprised that the private school system is still flourishing (including CH with its increasing number of full fee payers and its international clientele). All serious educational analysts question its use and yet no-one ever quite gets to axe it. But Brexit is coming down the line - the elephant in the room down the line, I supposed you might say. All will be affected by it, from Sunderland when Nissan pulls out, to Christ's Hospital when food parcels to the poor and needy start running out. Something has to give. Why has the British public gone so silent on this? Is it bunker mentality? The Russians are at the gates, the cyanide capsule has been tested on the poor old Alsatian, the storm troopers are high on Benzedrine and marching up and down singing the Horstwezel Song, Hitler and Goebbels have made their suicide pact. The end is nigh.
No, it's because we are stupid.
But we are taking back control!
Like the current surge in unemployment, the trade deal the japanese have offered us is not being reported.
Dependent upon full access to our fishing waters for the japanese fleet.
Take it or leave it.
Very shortly we will be discovering what taking back control really means.
rockfreak
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

The DUP head is called Poots,
It's clear that he doesn't like fruits.
He believes in creation
And the Union nation.
He's a Prod to the soles of his boots.

Ok, OK, calm down, I understand that the term fruits is now massively non-PC, although when I was younger it was used both disparagingly and affectionately and sometimes humorously by people I knew from the Republic and Northern Ireland. Some of the brassy old queens I knew back then could take the p*ss out of themselves better than any straight person. And of course it's helped me to rhyme my new limerick. But I've no doubt I shall get a lesson in the latest PC etiquette from someone.
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Re: Politics

Post by Ajarn Philip »

There was an old feller named 'Freak
Who was thought to be well past his peak.
Though tough as old boots,
When he used the term fruits
He suddenly became rather meek.
rockfreak
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

Well the reason for that Phil is that when you're my sort of age you're struggling to deal with matters of PC and never quite sure who you're going to offend. Actually I'd rather imagined that any kickback I might get would be from some of the humourless drones who frequent this site and always seem to be taking an opportunity to have ago at me. So maybe I just tread carefully. Does anyone remember the days when the Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra had a go at Liberace and lost the resultant libel case because he'd labelled the exotic, piano playing old queen "fruit flavoured"?
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