Osborne £3bn cuts - Health: £200m

www.corporatewatch.org/news/2015/jun/17/researching-health-companies-web-search-guide

How to find out who owns your health service.

Even the doctors know there are two different health services, the one the politicians talk about, and the one the rest of us have to put up with.

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/22/ministers-must-get-real-over-nhs-crisis-says-doctors-union-head

Such a pity more of them did not shout about it before the election.

www.onmedica.com/newsArticle.aspx?id=ace16ff0-d8aa-45a9-8706-26eaab5cb276

This is today's silly story about the NHS. Not just cutting money, but cutting nurses. Non-EU nurses who have worked here for over six years will have to go back where they came from unless they earn more than £35,000.

What world do members of this government live in?

"The College points out that the average foreign nurse starts on a salary of £22,000, and even after eight years will still only be earning £28,000."

Quote from Peter Carter of the RCN.

Do any of you know any nurses who earn that amount?

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/18/jeremy-hunt-legal-action-watering-down-patient-safety

I do hope so. Nothing would please me more than seeing him in court having to justify what he has done to the NHS. I can think of a few lawyers who would love to cross examine him.

By the way, did anyone else sign up to not having their health data shared?
It sounds like it's all gone to insurance companies without our permission, and of course they do not have the money or resources to put it right.

Back to health.

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/06/nhs-lord-carter-hospitals-wasting-millions-pounds

What he is actually saying is that splitting the NHS into hundreds of trusts did not work; competition does not work, but cooperation is not allowed;imposing centralisation could save a great deal.
But it is only saving £400 million. There's another £21.6 billion to save, according to Hunt.

Is this the start of a welcome u-turn? Another one?

Ah, I see, I think.
It is only the tories that will get the data? And have it paid by the public purse?
[does cross-Whitehall mean across the tory government departments?]

Because it's only the Tory party who have done this.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-awards-contracts-to-monitor-social-media-and-give-whitehall-realtime-updates-on-public-opinion-10298255.html?origin=internalSearch

Unless, of course, you know differently.

I agree grannyonce.

Durhamj -
this is a spurious arguement as I am sure you know

in 2001 - labour got 40% of votes , Conservatives got 32% of votes
in 2005 - labour got 35% of votes , Conservatives got 32% of votes
in 2010 - labour got 29% of votes , Conservatives got 36% of votes

so why are you arguing when this seems to only apply when it is a Conservative result.
Who decides what they are looking for? The government, which was voted in by 37% of the voting population.

I consider anything I ever write on the computer to be open.

I dont really get your point dj. If you write things on the computer, they are traceable. And permanent.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/24/e-petitions-often-worse-than-useless

Very few have worked, although I am pleased to say some have. Certain people on Gransnet have said they will not sign e-petitions because they will be giving away information. From now on, none of your information will be private anyway if these companies are trawling for keywords and following up.

Epetitions are transparent. Having companies check up on who is writing what and handing the information daily to the government is not.
Who decides what they are looking for? The government, which was voted in by 37% of the voting population.

I didn't, jen.
I think the reason the government is paying rather than the Tory party is that it is governing the whole country and not just Tory voters.
I thought the thing with e-petitions was that if a certain number of people signed them, then the government had an obligation to debate them. Is that not the case?

Really, Jane? How did you live that down?

What I'd like to know is why the population as a whole should be paying for it, as opposed to just the Tory party. There's a difference between people listening to us and gathering information using keywords.

Like I said, lots of e-petitions have been disregarded as they did not suit the Tories.

The Government do invite our opinions, jen.
Anyone can write to their MP or start a petition.
But if we enjoy free speech, we can't be selective about who listens to us.
i don't know enough about the subject to comment on whether a computerised method of monitoring is any more or less cost effective than someone going through the newspapers taking clippings, which is how it has been done in the past.

You will probably be amused to hear that as a result of some letters that I wrote to the South China Morning Post in my younger days, I was told by a police officer whom I met socially that I had been marked as a communist sympathiser

Jane, I have been trying to find out about this on the Parliament website, but can find no record of it on Hansard.
What I was wondering is which department pays for it when most departments are having their finances cut. A cabinet office spokeswoman said it was about getting better value for money, but if it's new contracts for something that has not been done before, surely it just costs more.
Francis Maude is the minister in charge of the cabinet office; he is now in the House of Lords.
So where would it have been announced if not in parliament itself?

I think they should ask us our opinions, but not monitor it, paying private companies to track keywords.
If they want to know our opinions, do it openly.
I think I put a link up to a surveymonkey site where the government was asking what it thought they ought to cut. It closed yesterday. I only found out about it on Thursday.
On 20th June there is an anti-austerity march in London, with thousands of people signed up to go. Will they take notice of that?
Did they take notice of the marches and petitions against the NHS changes?
I do not think they are doing it for our good. Hope to be proved wrong, of course.

Jen isn't that one of the reasons some people go on Twitter and Facebook, so that they can publicise their views?
Even I have been known to share the odd article or petition I feel strongly about.
If the government takes notice of public opinion and then acts on it then that's a good thing.

When we lived in Hongkong, the Colonial Government was in force and no-one, local or expatriate, had a vote. But the Government monitored the letters pages of the South China Morning Post and the Chinese-language newspapers and policy was sometimes changed as a result of vociferous opposition.

Just saying.

Ah I see - sorry about that.

Whatever you say, be careful.
This is money that the government is spending.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-awards-contracts-to-monitor-social-media-and-give-whitehall-realtime-updates-on-public-opinion-10298255.html?origin=internalSearch

They want to know what you say about them and are paying companies to follow social media.

They were all meant to be on the different areas of cuts Teetime. If you let me know which ones were the same I will go back and put the correct information on.

I assume PH budgets were/are ring-fenced too which basically means spend it on PH or hand it back to Government.

Don't get me going on 'Public Consultations', I've yet to see a local one make a jot of difference and definitely they've frequently been tokenistic and a panicked afterthought when the decision has already been made (usually when it has raised public ire or last-second questions.

One 'consultation' at a very swish venue was cancelled at an hours notice because nobody had publicised it.

Gracesgran kitty was pointing out that your original postings as appeared numerous times in other threads!!

Gracesgran
£200million is not a lot of money in NHS terms and I don't think it includes social care.
I agree with Loopylou a lot of it is wasted.
About ten years ago there was a smoking cessation campaign which featured a smoker with a blue face and a fish hook embedded in his cheek, pulling at the side of his mouth. It had to be withdrawn because so many people complained about it because being in poor taste.
Then there was a video put out on social media, of a vampire-like person with foul looking gums, trying to seduce a young woman. It was supposed to encourage young men to go to the dentist to get their bleeding gums and lousy teeth sorted out.
The video got about 6 million hits and won awards (I know this because SiL made it for one of the PCTs) but no-one ever assessed whether any young men had gone to the dentist as a result of watching the video

Then there are all the public consultations that Health Authorities do. When they were having the umpteenth re-organisation a few years ago, the NE strategic health authority organised local meetings so people could be consulted about where the proposed boundary changes for the PCTs should be.
They then published in their minutes how many people had attended.
Some had had 3 or 4 people; one or two had had none.

That's just three examples of where money has been wasted with no benefit to patients whatsoever.
The problem is that the people who make these spending decisions are never called to account.
If cuts to public health expenditure make health authorities and Commissioning Groups more responsible and accountable then I think that's a good thing.