Can the Tories be trusted with OUR National Health Service

I looked something up on Google recently to complete a crossword - DH said that was 'cheating' and that my DB used to complete crosswords before Google. However, DB used to sit with a pile of dictionaries, reference books by the side of his chair - and always finished the crossword!

I try to never use google. I find www.inews.co.uk quite informative without using google. In fact, I try to avoid google on purpose because they don't pay their taxes properly.

In fact, if it wasn't for companies like google and starbucks, etc., our NHS would probably not be in the mess it is.

They are talking about reducing face-to-face appointments. However, the chairman of the RCGP said that video-link doctors appointments could increase their workloads.
A ten minute appointment takes ten minutes, whether over the phone or face-to-face. After the phone appointment the GP might need to see the patient anyway, so it would have been less time-consuming if the first appointment had been face to face.

My grandson was laughing very hard at the idea of a robot checking his teeth yesterday instead of a dentist. He likes the robot face and eyes. Mind, whenever he sees a train he talks about its face and eyes.

Google doesn't have a monopoly . There are other sources of information. Books in non-fiction libraries include printed statistics of all kinds of things. a phone call to the appropriate place asking a specific question will get a specific answer.

What on earth did we do before the internet? We learnt how to find facts in books, that is what.

When I was a volunteer with a small charity, someone heard of an organisation which supplied packets of sweets for charities to sell to make money (you had to buy them in bulk then sell them at a profit). Someone suggested we do that. It sounded a great moneymaker, but I said I would check on it first.

This was before Google. I went to the library, found figures on how many sweets people buy and how often, what a reasonable markup was, and the difference between turnover and profit. I did some sums and worked out that to make anything worth having, we would have to sell them in large quantities and as a regular thing, to strangers outside supermarkets, at our work-places, school playgrounds.

There were only a few able-bodied people who would be up to doing all that, and they were already overworked doing the other fundraising activities we ran. Without that research we would have been tied in to expense upfront and not got it back for at least a year, let alone made any funds.

But it wasn't spoonfed - I had to work at it and find out information. It was all there in the Central Library and up-to-date stuff is there still. You've to use your noddle about where to find things out.

Today should have been the only day when the elderly were not blamed for what is happening in the NHS.
One article was headed "Ageing British mothers add to strain on NHS resources".
You really couldn't make it up, could you.
I tell you, the knives are out.

Nobody can find soemthing if it is not on google!
what did we do before Google?
I found a lost earring once.

"Kelvin Hopkins(Luton North) (Lab): The Treasury’s problems are, above all, about income, not expenditure. There is a gap of £120 billion a year between the tax that should be paid and the tax that is actually paid. However, the Government have presided over tens of thousands of job cuts in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, where senior staff collect 20 times their own salaries and junior staff 10 times theirs. Are the Government not shooting themselves in the foot?"

This was two years ago, fitzy, on taxresearch. Of course, the government spokesperson disagreed.
However, one man who retired from HMRC said on the same thread that he had just found £400,000 of tax that had not been collected. His job was not refilled as they were making people redundant at the time.

Nobody can find soemthing if it is not on google!

Why not Ankers - stop expecting to be spoon fed!

DJ, it was the Trident figures I was asking about. Thanks. On tax collecting, I'm all for people paying their taxes, but from what I've read we will always struggle to get in the full amount which is due in line with tax law. The figures include, for example, money due from bankrupts - you can't get money from a stone. Also unpaid tax on smuggled goods. A successful crarckdown would be good, but that would stop smuggling rather than collect tax. I think 5bn or so is put down to illegal evasion and clearly needs to be addressed - but I assume that includes people paying for services in cash, untaxed criminal proceeds etc.Very hard to identify and collect. I'm not trying to make excuses for govt. or HMRC, but our "tax gap" is not out of line with other countries. In fact we seem to do quite well in comparison, and, to give credit where it's due, I understand we are quite unusual in publishing annual figures. Whether resourcing HMRC would collect more than it costs I can't say - I don't think its right to simply assume that is the case.

I've looked up the STP plans for my area. As far as I can tell, there are no plans to shut any hospitals or major units, but there aren't any plans to restore what we've lost, despite protests.

Our STP is a strange shape - long and thin and skirting the London suburbs. The main problem is with transport. As we're not that far from London all the transport routes (roads, rail, buses) tend to radiate out of London. There are few cross country routes - especially public transport.

The idea is to have specialist centres concentrated in fewer locations. It's actually impossible for me to reach some of them by public transport without going into London and coming back out again. Goodness knows how long that would take or what the cost would be.

In this area, we have no mental health services or minor injury centre/walk in centre. The official maternity hospital is already 30 miles away. The idea, apparently, is to use tele-health and district nursing teams. Unfortunately, the district nursing team is practically non-existent and tele-health is unproven (see dj's link). In any case, tele-health doesn't actually save GP time.

The STP groups were supposed to consult with the public. I looked on the website for mine and there's a short, badly worded survey - and that's it! No meetings, no focus groups, nothing! It's a done deal.

Because they are not easy to find.

And is everything she gets via her emails, even on google?

I dont think so?

Picky or what! Yes ma'am!
(I hardly think DJ needs to be told to include more links and in any case why don't you look for yourself? )

And interprtation etc.

Please include links to where you get figures from durhamjen.

Posters sometimes like to check them, and their sources, context, and accuracy.

inews.co.uk/nhs/mobile-phone-device-helping-reduce-ae-admissions/

inews.co.uk/nhs/telehealth-will-make-prisoner-home/

Views on telehealth.

inews.co.uk/nhs/chemotherapy-home-become-reality-problems/

If it's Trident you are talking about, the CND figures include the running costs over a forty year lifespan, which is what we are told it will be.
Anyway, we can cover the NHS gap by collecting all the taxes that are due, the gap between what we have collected and what we should have collected.

What figures? If you are talking about the taxgap it's from taxresearch.
HMRC always downplay the taxgap.

25 billion to set what up?

Jen where did you get the figures? Some BBC figures I've seen suggest around 25bn to set it up, with CND estimating 100bn (disputes) if you add in long term running costs. I haven't researched this properly at all so I have no particular confidence in the figures I've given but they did lead me to just ask the question. In any event I agree that there is a debate to be had about priorities. But a lot of people support Trident. Also, I don't know if Trident counts towards the 2% of GDP spent on defence as the commitment we have made to NATO? If so I guess any savings from scrapping it would go into alternative defence spending. But maybe Tridant is separate. I've tried to find out but so far I've failed.

Exactly, Jalima.
It's all a question of priorities.

Are you American, Ankers?

How much will that train cost - about £60 billion?

Shortening the journey time for a privileged few and disrupting people's homes, villages, lives.
We need better rail links, improved services, but not that one.

There would be enough to improve rail services and have some left for the NHS.

^HMRC said last year that the total tax gap between tax owed and tax collected was £36 billion.
If they only spend one or two billion to collect that tax, the NHS could be fully funded.^

I dont get the math in that at all.

How do you know that a spend of 1 or 2 billion will get specific results of enough to spend on the NHS. And what does a fully funded NHS cost? How many more billions?

I would look back at these words too from the HMRC, but no link to get context, and check words etc.
You have just proved my point. The very next post.

^11 bloody links, Ankers. I counted them.
I refuse to reply to you any more.^

Up to you. No one says you have to.

And that does not actually answer my posts. Oh well.

£22 billion black hole in the NHS.
£202 billion to replace Trident.

Do we need a referendum?

HMRC said last year that the total tax gap between tax owed and tax collected was £36 billion.
If they only spend one or two billion to collect that tax, the NHS could be fully funded.

Why are people not up in arms about that?

11 bloody links, Ankers. I counted them.
I refuse to reply to you any more.

The links are there Ankers. You just can't be bothered to read them

But that is my point.
No they are not/were not in some cases.

Saying, "this is from the independent" or this is from xxx", or even not saying where, means they are not there!