George Osborne confirms an extra £2bn in annual funding for frontline NHS

Going through Parliament at the moment, to try and stop the NHS from being even more privatised than it is.

www.hospitaldr.co.uk/blogs/our-news/new-private-members-bill-aims-to-reverse-tory-health-reforms

According to this article over ten billion pounds of contracts were hived off to private healthcare last year.

Durhamjen

I heard what I want to know re facts during Burnhams Urgent Question and the answers Jeremy Hunt gave were not challenged by Burnham so I assume I can take them as reliable.

Durhamjen

It was not a 'debate'.

It was an 'Urgent Question' which by rights is put forward on the day to bring the Minister to the House at short notice. One could say a ploy used at times to put the governing Minister on the back foot due to the short notice and score points for the opposition.
Which failed dramatically for Andy Burnham and Bercow on the 18th December.

An Urgent Question does not run and run as there are allocated time slots for the 'order of the day ' and that's why the Speaker has to give 'special permission' for an Urgent Question to be put forward as it takes time from the natural order of the day.. Plus the fact there were no Labour MP's left to ask questions, they had all skidaddled.

So your comment 'Just shows how important A&E is to the man in charge' is to be frank wide off mark and doesn't make sense.

Actually, I made a mistake. It was less than 3/4 of an hour. Even less important.

There's an interesting fact for you, too, POGS.
How nurse numbers can be up as well as down.

https://fullfact.org/factcheck/health/more_or_fewer_nurses_since_2010_cameron_pmqs-37753

I know who I do not believe on the NHS, the party that has always wanted to get rid of it, privatise it, sell it off to its rich friends and to hell with the people who really need it.
That debate lasted for less than an hour and a half. Just shows how important A&E is to the man in charge.

Papa, Full Fact has a series of naked graphs, just showing figures with no context, for people to guess what they are about. Quite interesting.

https://fullfact.org/

No, Pogs, I can't attribute 'Silly little Britons' to anyone else so I must plead guilty. When I hear politicians and others blithely talking about walking away from the EU without any regard to the consequences I despair. However, you're quite right about economists and statisticians - they both stir up their buckets of raw material and spray out a stream of 'facts' to suit whoever's paying them. Particularly irritating are increases and decreases, described in glowing terms to justify the whim of the moment. Sad to be so cynical, but there we are. And as for open land, brown, green, whatever, there are vast tracts of it all over the place. What we need is a national plan and some strategic thinking.

soontobe

Perhaps because figures tend to be put forward to be bias in one direction or another.

It is a fact you can have a room full of economists/ statisticians and they would/could produce figures that contradict each other. Political bias is a major factor in how a person thinks and which figures they choose to adhere to.

Now this point will be argued but for my money I prefer to hear and see from the horses mouth and might I suggest you try and find the following if it still available.

On Dec 18th 2014 Speaker Bercow gave Andy Burnham permission for an urgent Question to be put to the House 'Urgent Question on A&E '.

If you can find it it is an eye opener. Mind you it was an own goal for Labour's Shadow Health Minister Andy Burnham as only 10 Labour MP's were available to put questions to Jeremy Hunt. . That meant that Andy Burnham had to sit and listen again to the number of extra nurses and doctors there are in the NHS. He had to suffer the points raised re his stewardship of the NHS etc.. and by the end he was practically on his own as even the 10 Labour MP'S that were there drifted off.

Have you ever been to the Highlands of Scotland, the Welsh mountains or the hills of the Peak District, soon? Very obviously there are large tracts of countryside where few people live and urban areas where there's a dearth of housing. You can't have even population distribution where there is land unsuitable for building or in use for agriculture and husbandry. I'm sure there are maps on the internet that show population distribution and land use.

I cant get my head around population figures.
We seem to be fit to bursting, as a country. And yet that is not what the population figures say.

Papaoscar

Your post calling some people 'Silly Little Britons', were they your own words and thoughts.

I only ask as it resembles something I have read /heard before, probably from you on another thread but I can't stop thinking where I've read it before and you know what it's like when something is nibbling away in your mind, it get's on your nerves.

I keep thinking it was something somebody connected to the European Parliament said.

My mother was a nurse in HRI in 1975, vampire. It was much better then, as you say because cleaning and catering were in house. She worked on the geriatric wards, the one where, when she was admitted in 2006 she got MRSA, twice!

Magpie, I too remember the NHS of the 70s. My ex husband worked in a hospital. It was a time when all the services were in house. Ward housekeepers ensured that wards were kept clean. Not just dry wiped but properly cleaned because they had enough hours in their contract to do the work required. Porters were available to move patients and equipment. Hospitals had proper kitchens which where run by qualified chefs. Wards had enough nurses so that they could spend time with patients offering reassurance rather than simply monitoring and dishing out meds.

Maggie attacked the NHS and the unions fought her. My ex was filmed on picket lines by members of the Special Branch. Union officials were harassed. The media attacked the workers saying it was there fault the NHS was failing when in fact they were fighting the cuts and changes that they knew would be detrimental to the service.

The problems in the NHS have little to do with a rising population but more the effects of 30+ years of underfunding and cuts.

Btw, magpie, did you vote in 1975?

papaoscar Said with feeling - and I wholeheartedly agree with you.

You only have to fly over this country to see that the claim that there is no room to build in this country is absolute nonsense. Having so much unremarkable land designated as Green Belt works well for landowners because it ensures that land prices remain high.

The knock on effect is that housing developments cram small unimaginatively designed homes together, and very little land is set aside within new developments for purely aesthetic or recreational purposes - attractive public spaces and amenities such as "village greens" and playgrounds. The often rather characterless results mean that established communities tend to be opposed to new housing being built near them.

I certainly wouldn't want to model our immigration policies on those of Australia which is hardly a shining example of humane treatment of either its own indigenous population or of asylum seekers.

This is from Full Facts about immigration.
The government trusts what they say.

https://fullfact.org/immigration/public_perceptions_opinion-36471

There should be a points system like in Australia.

So you're okay and want to pull up the drawbridge on anyone else who wants to come here and make a life for themselves.

durhamjen I had a lovely Christmas with my husband, children and grandchildren, nice of you to ask.

papaoscar I am not blaming anyone just stating facts, too many people in Britain since we joined the EU. There must be a limit on immigration. Anyone with any sense would see this.

As you do not know anything about me, I assume you are talking from your own experience because no one in my family or circle of friends behaves like this.

I am mixed race myself.

You blame the foreigner for your ills and point fingers of scorn at things not Britiish, many of you silly little Britons. Yet at the same time you ape things foreign, depend on foreigners, flop yourselves out on foreign beaches, drink yourselves silly, vomit on your own streets, line up like cattle at your ancient, inadequate airports and stations, forget your great history, and carry on like modern-day morons. But its all the fault of those damned foreigners, not the greedy, grasping rich-boy government that has been screwing you without mercy to make up for the sins of their banking friends. Never mind, Johnny and Jemimah Foreigner will pick the spuds in your fields for peanuts, wipe up the mess in your hospitals and keep your ancient infrastructure going. Its all they're fit for. After all, you're British. I'm still proud to be so, but sometimes I feel ashamed of what my country has become.

And I assume you realise that the OBR was set up by Osborne to confirm that he was doing the correct thing by giving more to the rich and penalising the poor.

Did you not have a very good Christmas, magpie?

I imagine some members of the OBR live in London. This is what is happening to London housing, sunseeker. A look at how many houses and flats are owned by foreigners, many of whom have no desire to live here themselves, but use the housing situation in this country to bolster their own finances.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/26/londoners-miss-out-as-foreign-investors-buy-up-home-sites

Did you read the bit where it said that golf courses take up more room in Surrey than houses? Could build on a few golf courses.

So is the OBR saying that we should build over the green parts of UK to house immigrants? I have nothing against anyone coming to this country who can make a contribution with skills or whatever and I know they have to be housed somewhere but to have an almost "open borders" policy is foolish. No doubt the members of the OBR don't live in the areas which are being overcrowded and can afford private healthcare and private eduction for their children.

I beg to differ.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/11284994/Britain-has-masses-of-room-for-more-people-OBR-says.html