1% Payrise for NHS workers

foxie48 ??????Excellent posts.

I'm just utterly disgusted by the 1% - and how much did the test and trace failure cost?

PippaZ

Foxie I also think the pejorative, Daily Mail style abuse of a group of people tells us much about how you would want the world to be run. The elderly sick are not "bed blockers". It is a derogatory term which seems to date back to the 1980s time when the only good thing you could be was rich!

If there is a problem with the system it is up to those running that system to find a way around it not accuse the elderly and sick who can do nothing about it.

The way you use this term tells us everything we need to know about your opinion of the NHS. From what I can see it comes down to privatise as quickly as possible and deprive others of what we grew up with. If I am wrong do, please, tell me what you do want.

Goodness I have no idea how you came to that conclusion, I think you have completely misconstrued my posts. Actually I am completely against further privatisation of the NHS, and was against the Thatcher govt introducing it. I am happy to pay more into the NHS but I'm also aware of the waste that goes on in many areas of our healthcare. You mention the Nordic countries in one of your posts, Sweden, Norway and Finland all have higher tax rates than the UK and they also have slightly different systems to us eg in Sweden you will pay something for some services, Norway has a co-payment scheme with an insurance scheme for everyone over 18. I may be wrong but I don't know of any system where everything is free and one of the costs that is rarely discussed is the wasted time when patients do not attend appointments. However, just because I support the NHS it doesn't mean that I think it is perfect, it most certainly isn't and IMO we keep papering over the cracks. FWIW if you go back to my first post on this thread, I think it's pretty clear where I stand.
Dictionary definition of the Bed Blocking : The long-term occupation of hospital beds, chiefly by elderly people, due to a shortage of suitable care elsewhere.

Foxie I also think the pejorative, Daily Mail style abuse of a group of people tells us much about how you would want the world to be run. The elderly sick are not "bed blockers". It is a derogatory term which seems to date back to the 1980s time when the only good thing you could be was rich!

If there is a problem with the system it is up to those running that system to find a way around it not accuse the elderly and sick who can do nothing about it.

The way you use this term tells us everything we need to know about your opinion of the NHS. From what I can see it comes down to privatise as quickly as possible and deprive others of what we grew up with. If I am wrong do, please, tell me what you do want.

In the past there were several different trade unions in the NHS each representing different workers and negotiating pay and conditions separately. So for example, this meant different deals for admin staff to nursing staff. Back to now, whilst 1% sounds paltry for nurses, it applies across the board so those on higher salaries will get much more actual money than those on lower ones.

Equality is affordable if the country chooses it to be foxie. The Nordic countries aim a much greater equality than our half and half view of economics and it doesn't hold their economies back. Other countries have little or no interest in equality and can make the economics work. We have made this work in the past but we now have the wringing of hands from the heartless conservative government and their hangers on with "It can't be done, it can't be done", winged at the poor and destitute, and those who just want a equal opportunity. What they are really saying is "we may have a bit less and we can't allow that."

PippaZ

foxie48

I'd like to see social care and the NHS brought closer together, it is a waste of money having elderly people blocking beds in NHS hospitals because there is nowhere suitable in the community for them. We also need a more multi-disciplinary approaches to care so that people don't get shuffled between departments as much, again it's very wasteful of resources and not a great experience for the patient either. We also need to examine whether a "free at point of contact" NHS is still a viable option. IMHO we'll never have the money to pay the staff (including cleaners etc) adequately until we have brought the service into the 21stC, when it was designed in 1948 it was a very different world and offered pretty basic care compared to today, however, is there a political party brave enough to do that?

The elderly are people too foxie48 and describing them as bed-blocking is not what you would do with any other group.

I do agree on the multi-disciplinary point although I have a feeling (yet again) that this is what we used to do. From a personal point of view, my mother was shifted from ward to ward to a different hospital to a care assessment home. For someone with Alzheimer's it was torture. She did then go to a lovely home where she celebrated her 99th birthday two weeks later. The carers understand things nurses and doctors either don't or are not allowed to take into account. We need to ensure they have suitable qualifications that bring a properly placed salary with them.

If we don't have free at the point of contact you change what we have aimed for since the war; since all those killed had the same simple cross on the same simple grave. If you don't believe in increasing equality then of course you are right to look at "free at the point of need" (not contact).

Again I half agree with you about the updating but I am very aware the NHS staff were treated like people on a manufacturing line at one point. I always remember the "tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I behave" quote. Humans are clever and if you measure them in a way that doesn't work for people (although it may work for widgets) they will find a way around it. But we have seen we need to use technology, take it on board and work with it in the NHS.

At 72 I am considered "elderly" and bed blocking is a term used in the NHS. It is a huge frustration in pretty much every NHS hospital that "elderly" people who would be happier and in a better care situation, are staying far too long on medical wards when actually they no longer need the level of nursing care in a hospital. Not an opinion a fact, most younger patients would have been discharged into the community.
I don't disagree with anything in your second point and having looked after my MIL until she died in late 2019 at the great age of 101 I am not unaware of the challenges of caring for the very elderly.
I don't know of any other health care system which is free at point of contact. It isn't about equality, it's about affordability. One of the huge strengths of the NHS is the quality of care you get when you need it most regardless of how deep your pockets are, however, I'd be happy to pay for services if it meant a better service for everyone generally and I don't think I am alone in that.
My daughter is a hospital doctor (anaesthetist) and my niece is a surgeon so I get an insight into the NHS from people who work in it, neither do private work. There is huge waste, both stand around when lists are cancelled because there isn't an intensive care bed, because they can't move patient A onto a ward because they can't discharge patient B into a suitable care home. The search for beds even before covid was a daily scramble. Which brings us back to point 1. Where the widgets and manufacturing line in your post come in, I'm really not sure. One thing is certain though, with the technological and medical advances that we have made since 1948 the NHS is able to treat illness and injury that would have been fatal, but there is a cost to this. If in the last budget, VAT had been increased by 1% to pay for improvements to the NHS, I for one, would have been very happy to pay up!

foxie48

I'd like to see social care and the NHS brought closer together, it is a waste of money having elderly people blocking beds in NHS hospitals because there is nowhere suitable in the community for them. We also need a more multi-disciplinary approaches to care so that people don't get shuffled between departments as much, again it's very wasteful of resources and not a great experience for the patient either. We also need to examine whether a "free at point of contact" NHS is still a viable option. IMHO we'll never have the money to pay the staff (including cleaners etc) adequately until we have brought the service into the 21stC, when it was designed in 1948 it was a very different world and offered pretty basic care compared to today, however, is there a political party brave enough to do that?

The elderly are people too foxie48 and describing them as bed-blocking is not what you would do with any other group.

I do agree on the multi-disciplinary point although I have a feeling (yet again) that this is what we used to do. From a personal point of view, my mother was shifted from ward to ward to a different hospital to a care assessment home. For someone with Alzheimer's it was torture. She did then go to a lovely home where she celebrated her 99th birthday two weeks later. The carers understand things nurses and doctors either don't or are not allowed to take into account. We need to ensure they have suitable qualifications that bring a properly placed salary with them.

If we don't have free at the point of contact you change what we have aimed for since the war; since all those killed had the same simple cross on the same simple grave. If you don't believe in increasing equality then of course you are right to look at "free at the point of need" (not contact).

Again I half agree with you about the updating but I am very aware the NHS staff were treated like people on a manufacturing line at one point. I always remember the "tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I behave" quote. Humans are clever and if you measure them in a way that doesn't work for people (although it may work for widgets) they will find a way around it. But we have seen we need to use technology, take it on board and work with it in the NHS.

Good to hear, Galaxy.

Two families in our street, including us.

Yes. No one in my street bothered....

Wonder if, having never clapped before, I’ll be the only person in my road doing a slow hand clap tonight.

I'd like to see social care and the NHS brought closer together, it is a waste of money having elderly people blocking beds in NHS hospitals because there is nowhere suitable in the community for them. We also need a more multi-disciplinary approaches to care so that people don't get shuffled between departments as much, again it's very wasteful of resources and not a great experience for the patient either. We also need to examine whether a "free at point of contact" NHS is still a viable option. IMHO we'll never have the money to pay the staff (including cleaners etc) adequately until we have brought the service into the 21stC, when it was designed in 1948 it was a very different world and offered pretty basic care compared to today, however, is there a political party brave enough to do that?

At some point QE is unwound. Nobody says running a country is like running a household. But there's still a need to remember that there are real resources involved, in both cases.
Think I’m going to leave conversation here MaizieD or we could still be talking about this in months!

Katek

Borrowing /issuing Gilts might make sense in terms of capital investment and longer term growth; but much less sense to fund current expenditure

There is no 'borrowing' going on. The larger part of the deficit is QE. This is money creation. It is owed to no-one.

You're talking as though the country is a business. It's not. Neither is it a household. The economics of running either is nothing like that of a country.

Borrowing /issuing Gilts might make sense in terms of capital investment and longer term growth; but much less sense to fund current expenditure

A moratorium on any salary increases might be more appropriate until we have some idea of how we’re even going to start repaying the vast debt that the country has incurred.

I would stop worrying about that 'vast debt', because there isn't one. However, the government would like you to believe that there is one because it very much suits their objective of slashing state spending and privatising the NHS.

Please read this. It explains it nice and clearly

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/03/02/the-national-debt-paranoia/

Perhaps we should give the NHS staff a decent pay rise and then have an enquiry into the amount of money wasted on government contracts that went to their mates without tender. And then get some of that money back.

I don’t think I’ve seen any mention in this thread of the job which I consider to be very much on the front line, the paramedic. They are the ones who are going into people’s homes to bring seriously ill covid patients (as well as others) to hospital. They do not have the same level of PPE or sanitised working conditions that you find in hospital. They are extremely exposed to various sources of infection and their starting salary for what is now a graduate profession is around £21.000, Teachers, police and nursing staff have starting salaries around £24-26k.

A moratorium on any salary increases might be more appropriate until we have some idea of how we’re even going to start repaying the vast debt that the country has incurred.

My quote disappeared! That was to foxie

Well said.

I don't know whether the Government is deliberately running down the service that the NHS offers in order to say that it is not fit for purpose and should be privatised, which is one idea.

Or whether the lack of any sort of business experience and expertise among the Government means that they don't understand that this is reducing the loyalty and numbers of staff, therefore, as foxie48 has just said, increasing the need for more expensive agency staff and thus making the service more expensive than it needs to be.

Or again, whether it is a ruse so that they can change their minds, increase the offer, and look generous.

Or is it another way to make us all start arguing among ourselves over who deserves what, thus absolving the Government of any responsibility.

Who knows?

Nurses (and doctors) should be paid properly but IMV it should not be linked to this pandemic, which has been pretty demanding for some NHS workers but certainly not for all of them. My daughter is a core trainee anaesthetist. At her hospital as in most others, all elective work was cancelled and theatres were open only for emergency cases. When not in theatre she did her share in intensive care, either with covid patients or with non covid. She was very busy at times, PPE is very uncomfortable to wear and at times the work was distressing, but that is what she has trained for. I don't think she feels she deserves a pay rise for doing her bit during a pandemic. However, because the general pay for NHS staff is fairly low, they are often short staffed and need to bring in agency staff. This costs the NHS a huge amount of money. Nurses and doctors can earn a lot more money not being on the permanent staff or by working the odd shift of overtime. This is not a good use of our money.

Casdon. But they are all getting a pay rise. They are all getting 1%. Admittedly not much, but more than most and those who have worked through but not in danger do still have a job. 1% or no job at all? continuing pension payments or losing absolutely everything you have ever worked for? And that is why I think those who have genuinely worked themselves into the ground should get a bonus rather than a pay rise.

Gwyneth and Lizbethann55 I can see that you think only those staff whose lives were in most danger as in direct contact with known COVID+ patients are the ones who should get a pay rise. I don’t agree, everybody has been affected, and how divisive would that be to the future running of services where staff on the same grades get paid differential rates based on where in the service they happened to be working during the pandemic?