The Left's way forward

To be fair though, just about all workers work some weekends or part of the weekend , my daughter-in-law is a nurse, and she works every other Sunday.She is very dedicated to the sick children in her care and although not forced to work weekends, does so because so few of the other nurses on the ward will work those days.Policemen work weekends, and a load of other public sector workers in key jobs do as well.

Agreed so why is Jeremy Hunt saying things need to change when NHS workers are already working weekends? The answer is simple he wants to make out the NHS isn't working and open up the organisation to more privatisation. Fortunately this has backfired on him as NHS staff tweet all the things they have been doing in unsocial hours.

I suppose things need to change, because although some nurses ( for example) will work weekends, others won't and this makes Sat and Sunday very difficult,at times there can be just a couple working,and if they go sick/ need a holiday the rota goes haywire.If it was compulsory for them to take turns at weekend working, the wards would run more smoothly.

So you would rather have a nurse looking after you who was working under duress and really didn't want to be there? In any case some staff have religious objections to working Sat or sun.

As someone who worked in the nhs for her entire career I have to say that we absolutely have to change. People get sick and need care 24/7. We can't take weekends off from illness or accidents. The historical approach to weekends just has to stop. In order to staff this situation more medical and nursing staff are required but they must accept a rota and shift pattern that ignores weekends. Its tough but that's life these days. The weekend mortality rate dictates this.

Try getting to see a constultant or senior doctor over the weekend if you're in hospital! The nursing staff do a wonderful job, but a lot departments are virtually 'on hold' until Monday morning.

Absolutely -that's why it needs to change.

My understanding was that ward nurses on permanent contracts have to work unsocial hours and that it's only agency nurses who can pick and choose what shifts they do. Who was the gransnetter who said she wanted to return to work but she felt she would not be able to survive the very long shifts that she had been told were mandatory?

When my husband was a nurse he only occasionally got a full weekend off, he did "long" days (I think it was 7 am to 7 pm) and had to work Bank Holidays on a rota basis.

As for doctors being required to work weekends, as many letters in the national press from doctors' wives and husbands have demonstrated, most doctors do arrange with their colleagues to provide weekend cover on a rota basis. I believe consultants are more likely to take advantage of the agreement that they are not obliged to be available at weekends. Perhaps this needs to be looked at but, as several of them have already pointed out, if they are required to work at weekends they will not be available throughout the whole of the week and unless more doctors are employed it will simply spread the problem across the whole 7 days, rather than solve it.

Under the present contracts there are doctors working weekends and covering unsocial hours, particularly in operating theatres where they tend to keep them open as much as possible. The figures for deaths at weekends are probably misleading. Sometimes care will be specifically focused so that someone dies when family can be there. I think if you were to take the figures for deaths early in the morning they would probably show a huge peak. Nothing to do with the care in hospitals, just a fact of life. The Conservatives are trying to do to the NHS what Thatcher did to the miners, make out it has a problem and get rid of it.

Not according to this article.

fullfact.org/health/hospital_deaths_weekend_seven_day_nhs-45095

I too once stood as a Labour candidate in a perm Tory seat - not with any hope of election but just to give any Lefty members of the community someone to vote for, as I had felt unable to vote for anyone the previous time.
Labour does seem to have lost its way in terms of communicating what it stands for and I think that is where Jeremy Corbyn seems to have caught a lot of voters' attention. He speaks with conviction, discusses with confidence and does not prevaricate - the young especially find that direct communication attractive. I do not want him to be the Labour leader but I can see why the other three do not compare favourably with him. Labour should listen up and start talking straight instead of always trying to cover their back.
I do like the Living Wage & Pension, also Accessible Learning - but why stop at 22? Enough with the austerity! You can't compare UK with Greece. I would add Nationalise the Railways (that would be quite simple to do as pointed out in previous post) - in fact I would want a gradual re-nationalisation of all utilities: Water, Lecky, Gas and Comms. IMO private companies cannot be trusted with these essentials and have done nothing to improve on what would have developed anyway....they've just added in their profit.

Sorry.......'cover its back'

fullfact.org/live/2015/jul/7_day_nhs_6000_deaths-46562

Jeremy Hunt's department still cannot give any substantiation for the numbers he has stated, although Full Fact has asked for them.

I worked in social care for many years and saw many changes, some good, some bad, but the one thing that always went with the job was weekend work, bank holidays and of course Christmas and the New year. We always tried to distribute work as fairly as possible which was not always easy, there were always willing and unwilling horses, but the patients had to be covered as the job required. Surely health care in whatever shape or form should reflect this requirement and the people who choose to work in this environment should be aware of this aspect of their job.
As for renationaisation?! The railways and the utilities were so badly run under this system leading to years of under investment and neglect by both political parties which in turn has taken years to be even begin to rectify,. So never mind the expense, even the thought of resurrecting this clearly failed system would be completely dotty.

Maybe if the railways were used more for transporting goodswhich the Labour party did try to promote] more money would have been invested in them. As it is Thatcher pandered to the road transport lobby and we now have roads that clog up because they're full of lorries and trains that a lot of us can't afford to use.

The switch from the railways to the road to transport freight started in the 1960's long before Mrs Thatcher was even an MP, let alone in charge of anything, hence Dr Beeching. There have been other politicians in control of this country before and after this lady who have actually caused immense damage , but everyone always harks back to, what is it, 35 years, as if there has never been any other person in in charge either before or afterwards. Well maybe there hasn't, certainly not anyone with one ounce of bottle, except perhaps Tony Blair in the early days, and that is why no one else but these two are ever talked about.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/07/27/it-s-official-private-prisons-cost-taxpayer-more-than-state

This is an interesting analysis of the prison service which the government wants to privatise more.

Has anyone else read the government response to the epetition asking for an enquiry into Hunt? It's absolute rubbish. It's not a response to the petition at all.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/104334

I think there should be a petition into the government's response!

Another reason to back Corbyn. He wants media reform.

www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/jeremy-corbyn-media

An enquiry has been asked for to get Osborne to release details of a meeting he had with Murdoch just days before the government revealed they were stopping £650 million of BBC money. Naturally, the government will not release the papers.

I have just heard two spokesmen talking about JC's economic plans on The World at One. They made a lot of sense.

I also heard the Chris Lesley (Shadow Chancellor) talk scathingly about JC's economic plan and how he would split the Labour Party. Do I mind? Probably not. Yes it would mean a coalition of the left to be in power but I have always liked the idea of smaller parties and more coalition government. So, Chris Lesley ... you don't scare me although that was obviously what he intended to do.