A new forest or money for the NHS?

Of course I don't.

I am glad I don't sit in Downing Street because I really don't know what would really please you ladies. There is pressure from within the country for more forestation. Our railways are just as Stevenson and Brunel built them and how do we modernise we build new steam engines, eg Tornado. Our present railways are running at capacity, having torn much of there track up, because we preferred to get in our cars. Now we want let the train take the strain. Almost every country in the world rich or poor has high speed modern trains, but Britain. As for the NHS it was planned in 1943 by William Beverage and implemented in 1948 for a much smaller population on the basis it could paid for by a weekly payment by those in work. Within a year it was in financial difficulty and charges were introduced for spectacles, teeth and prescriptions because of the unnecessary demand that comes with free at the point of use. Poor old Aneurin Bevan resigned over it. We won't such rich country if continue in our present mode with productivity falling.

I'm more than happy for taxpayers' money to be spent on trees because they are the life blood of the planet- without them to replenish the oxygen, every creature on it would die.

The problem with the NHS is not lack of funding, it's misspending of funds on the wrong things with too many people using a service which was never set up to provide extensive services for so many. By wrong things I include cosmetic treatments, IVF, sex changes, gastric bands, abortion on demand etc. The NHS should be purely for treating unavoidable diseases and emergencies. If you go bungee jumping and it goes wrong then you should have insurance to cover any accidental damage. If you decide to take drugs or drink too much or eat yourself silly then too bad, I say. It shouldn't be my problem to pay for your treatment when it's self inflicted.

It's lack of funding, quizqueen.
I do hope you don't need to find out.

Just had practical experience of our local NHS. Husband sent to A&E on Monday, I drove there dreading the queues. Walked into a nearly empty waiting area, triaged (?) immediately, taken through to bed area, blood tests, x-rays, CT scan and a move to the surgical ward. Operated on at 6 pm. Fantastic!
Staff busy, friendly, efficient, did not seem over-faced and there was plenty of them.

No it is not all lack of funding!
Which is why some hospital trusts are doing better than others.
What is does need is joining up of services.

Which won't happen with the service fractured with private providers. When I read that people think the NHS is top heavy with administrators, I think of all the people employed to manage private providers, from the commissioning stage through to the re-commissioning stage including when a provider is failing. Having worked in the public sector both in local government and in the Civil Service, I know only too well how this process works. That's what comes to mind when I hear the phrase Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

I think at first this may have worked well - sometimes government departments can become complacent, the work ethic was not there, the need to complete jobs properly within a time scale lost its urgency - after all, it's not their money, they don't have to think about how to pay the work force etc, keep down costs to be competitive. I am thinking in particular of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works - often known in those days as the 'Ministry of Public Blunders and Shirks'. Inviting tenders from private companies to take over certain works could, in fact, be a good thing as the companies were keen, the workforce keen to prove that they could do a good job at reasonable cost.

That is probably one of the reasons successive governments thought this was a good thing to do - besides which they did not have all those Civil Service and public sector pensions to fund.

However, some of the private companies have now probably become as inefficient as some Government departments were in those days and we need a total re-think about the provision of these services.

The times I've seen it working well were always down to the individual representing the organisation. At the start of privatisation (or outsourcing), the standard of the tender process was appalling. The result was the contractor did not supply the product or service required, plus the contractor understood the process far better than the public sector procurement staff. It was a major help if the person from the organisation managing the contract understood the work involved.

The problem now 30 years on is we've lost the experience of the staff who knew how jobs were done. I also object to the staff currently doing the work not even being allowed to bid along with the private sector.

There is this great illusion in government that some how the private sector does things better, is more efficient, cost effective.

Having spent most of my working life in the private sector, most of it with big companies. All I can say is that the government don't have clue, big companies, and they only deal with big companies, are just as inefficient and badly managed as are government bodies. To get good results you need good managers with a clear remit. Whether they are employed in the government or private sector is irrelevant.

I've worked in both sectors and couldn't agree more -*M0nica*.

Upset as I am about ancient woodland etc being destroyed because of HS2, I asked my ex [who is a railway man[ and he said it's the only way to free up existing track for more freight and, if we don't, more and more stuff will be transported by road. In an ideal world we would all travel by public transport, but that's never going to happen, and the lorries do a tremendous amount of damage to the environment. I don't know what the solution is, to be honest.

The original companies that bid for these contracts were small companies - well-managed, efficient and enthusiastic. They have expanded. Now they are huge, unwieldy and probably as bad, inefficient as the government was then.

What is the answer?
Certainly the answer is not trying to turn Government departments into agencies then privatising them.

Whether they are employed in the government or private sector is irrelevant.
I think that knowing that you need to work to a budget, stick to the terms of the contract, does concentrate the mind in the private sector, whereas, in the public sector, it is taxpayers' money therefore there may not be the same concentration because it is not so relevant to the running of the 'business'.

Carillion were contracted to do the HS2 but thats looking unlikely now.

I can’t summon up the energy to be cross about planting trees. Things being as they are in this mad world I can think of many worse things to do.

Carillon was formed through a series of mergers over several years and includes parts of the old Tarmac, McAlpine, Mowlem and John Laing - all old household names in the civil engineering world. Like most multinationals, it does not have the best reputation and always seems to be defending some court case. It's got it's fingers in a lot of government work, which is why ministers from several government departments met yesterday to discuss contingency plans. If it fails, tens of thousands of jobs are at risk.

Planting trees is good. They are being lost all over the globe faster than they are being replaced and quite a lot of the replacements will not live to maturity so we need MORE than were removed. But there is a time lag before they are doing their job fully of regulating air quality and Co2 content, so there is no instant measurable feedback and kudos to governments for planting them. Getting either praise or condemnation could influence them in either repeating the exercise or not bothering.

You can't balance it against the NHS as an either/or. If the cost were put into the NHS it would be like peeing in the ocean and expecting the tide to turn.