Politics General Election 2017

[Gwadien]

I wasn't operating a camera

Never have I been so critical of someones sound work.

 

[Moriath]

End of May too hopefully.

No beginning of June

 

[Job]

So many Tories in room.

 

[Job]

Anyway I'm quite happy this general election has been called, I was out cycling this morning and received a phone call "we can't find any soundmen in London, are you free?" So back home, quick shower, sort out the kit, into Manchester, get the train to Euston, picked up and driven to Westminster, 15 minutes or so to set up for ITN (was very panicked), did the ITN lives, then a 20 minute break and an hour of Channel 4 News. And apart from one tiny fluff with Diane Abbot's audio level, it all went well.

Interview with Lord Mandelson

Thanks Prime Minister, I'm a few hundred quid up and doubtless there'll be more to come

A guy wants to be my apprentice, he's a sound engineer, not getting any work at all, so jacking it in.
His names Rob..tall..long hair , arm tats..miserable bugger, you must know him...all sound recordists know each other dont they.

 

[Bodhi]

Anyway I'm quite happy this general election has been called, I was out cycling this morning and received a phone call "we can't find any soundmen in London, are you free?" So back home, quick shower, sort out the kit, into Manchester, get the train to Euston, picked up and driven to Westminster, 15 minutes or so to set up for ITN (was very panicked), did the ITN lives, then a 20 minute break and an hour of Channel 4 News. And apart from one tiny fluff with Diane Abbot's audio level, it all went well.

Interview with Lord Mandelson

Thanks Prime Minister, I'm a few hundred quid up and doubtless there'll be more to come

Next time can you just cut Diane Abbot's audio completely? Asking for most of the country.

 

[Lamp]

They keep going on about the NHS not having enough money. Rubbish. The NHS is not spending the money it gets properly. £30 for a packet of photocopy paper (£3 from Tesco). £180 for an electrician to change a light bulb (in the old days the maintenance guys did it). PFI's, Public Liability Insurance, thousands of middle managers no hospital needs, useless IT projects, the entire Trust organisation are killing the NHS.

Go back to basics. Fire the middle management, simplify the entire structural organisation, and hire doctors and nurses.

 

[BloodOmen]

They keep going on about the NHS not having enough money. Rubbish. The NHS is not spending the money it gets properly. £30 for a packet of photocopy paper (£3 from Tesco). £180 for an electrician to change a light bulb (in the old days the maintenance guys did it). PFI's, Public Liability Insurance, thousands of middle managers no hospital needs, useless IT projects, the entire Trust organisation are killing the NHS.

Go back to basics. Fire the middle management, simplify the entire structural organisation, and hire doctors and nurses.

NHS Tourism isn't helping either tbh, so many people travel to England purely to use the NHS then bugger off afterwards.

 

[Bodhi]

They keep going on about the NHS not having enough money. Rubbish. The NHS is not spending the money it gets properly. £30 for a packet of photocopy paper (£3 from Tesco). £180 for an electrician to change a light bulb (in the old days the maintenance guys did it). PFI's, Public Liability Insurance, thousands of middle managers no hospital needs, useless IT projects, the entire Trust organisation are killing the NHS.

Go back to basics. Fire the middle management, simplify the entire structural organisation, and hire doctors and nurses.

Biggest piss take in the NHS is the lack of central purchasing contract - rather than negotiating with "Big Pharma" centrally, and ensuring everyone pays a price you would expect for a health organisation the size of the NHS, they leave the Trusts to negotiate individually, meaning we pay way over the odds for medicines as well.

I do like the NHS, and I wouldn't be a fan of the public/insurance based system most of Europe seems to have gone with, but by christ does it need reform, as we can't keep shovelling more and more money at it.

 

[Raven]

Next time can you just cut Diane Abbot's audio completely? Asking for most of the country.

It was probably more angry nonsense with a racist undertone anyway. Why they even give her a platform is beyond me.

 

[Gwadien]

They keep going on about the NHS not having enough money. Rubbish. The NHS is not spending the money it gets properly. £30 for a packet of photocopy paper (£3 from Tesco). £180 for an electrician to change a light bulb (in the old days the maintenance guys did it). PFI's, Public Liability Insurance, thousands of middle managers no hospital needs, useless IT projects, the entire Trust organisation are killing the NHS.

Go back to basics. Fire the middle management, simplify the entire structural organisation, and hire doctors and nurses.

Yeah interestingly academies (IE schools that control theirselves) also get people in to change lightbulbs and stuff. Its silly.

As for cutting middle management? As in the people that vote for the Tories?

 

[Raven]

I have been in hospital over night a few times over the last couple of years. You basically get zerged by people looking for something to do but not actually doing anything. When they aren't doing that they just stand around the little stations chatting about what was on TV last night. As for trying to leave your bed and go home, good luck with that, it takes hours, last time I got fed up of waiting and told them I was going home and walked out.

Its a horror show of wastage.

Edit, that isn't to say they don't (eventually) do an outstanding job but they need a serious kick up the arse.

 

[Job]

The real problem for the NHS is that people pray to the alter of personal belongings, property, gadgets and cars.
So when relatives get elderly they fob them off to the government who has to find look after them, when the NHS fixes them they have nowhere to go because social care is fucked, they take up beds and resources while their kids are lying on a beach or spending every penny they have borrowed to have that bigger house.

 

[DaGaffer]

Biggest piss take in the NHS is the lack of central purchasing contract - rather than negotiating with "Big Pharma" centrally, and ensuring everyone pays a price you would expect for a health organisation the size of the NHS, they leave the Trusts to negotiate individually, meaning we pay way over the odds for medicines as well.

I do like the NHS, and I wouldn't be a fan of the public/insurance based system most of Europe seems to have gone with, but by christ does it need reform, as we can't keep shovelling more and more money at it.

Trusts are Tory. Lack of centralisation is Tory. Refusing to accept the concept of a natural monopoly is Tory. Ideological tinkering with the NHS which only fucks it up more is deeply Tory.

 

[Gwadien]

I have been in hospital over night a few times over the last couple of years. You basically get zerged by people looking for something to do but not actually doing anything. When they aren't doing that they just stand around the little stations chatting about what was on TV last night. As for trying to leave your bed and go home, good luck with that, it takes hours, last time I got fed up of waiting and told them I was going home and walked out.

Its a horror show of wastage.

Edit, that isn't to say they don't (eventually) do an outstanding job but they need a serious kick up the arse.

Not sure which hospital you're talking about, but hospitals are a slightly different gig to schools, since some are struggling, and some are not.

However, schools on the other hand.

I've been to two this year (since I am in my training year) both are exceptionally high performing schools in Leicester, both do not have up to date history text books.

This applies for many schools across the country, the Government in all their wisdom and glory decided to have a play with the national curriculum, thus changing the goal posts and making previous text books/other resources completely redundant as the old ones miss out large amounts of detail compared to the new books, as a result schools have had to fork tens of thousands on new text books, which is frankly ridiculous.

OfSted have also began a massive drive (it's been around for a while, but recently it turned 'massive') to get poorer kids a higher quality education, however, schools are struggling to do this due to the financial cuts (although schools DO get extra money for kids on free school meals) as a result of this, kids don't get English books for free (I did when I was at school) they have to pay for pretty much everything, there's no discount for 'normal' students on school trips, so if you wanna go abroad and give the kids a bit of cultural capital, you're looking at £500, and a 10% discount (or there abouts) for the poorer kids - £450 for a family on less than £16k, OK.

I don't know, I know there is issues with middle management, but I think the more realistic approach is not to cut so much money, because the middle management problem is on that isn't going to get removed very easily, these people are the people that spend all their time finding out how to defend their job, and their job is how to defend their job.

 

[Gwadien]

How can you do this to the NHS and not expect drastic change?

I mean, the national debt and stuff, is it -really- going to be a matter of wiping it out by 2020, or is it going to be something that's going to be around whilst the Tories are in power?

 

[Raven]

Exactly so just make them all redundant, because they are redundant to requirements. That is the problem with the public sector, they are all in it to cover their arses, from the top down. Excessive spending needs to be curbed and the only way the Tories can do that is to cut funding, it is up to the individual institutions, be it a school or a hospital to identify where they are wasting money...or take over direct management of institutions, you can imagine how well that would go down.

 

[Gwadien]

Exactly so just make them all redundant, because they are redundant to requirements. That is the problem with the public sector, they are all in it to cover their arses, from the top down. Excessive spending needs to be curbed and the only way the Tories can do that is to cut funding...or take over direct management of institutions, you can imagine how well that would go down.

I think the NHS would sink before the cuts actually found the middle management.

 

[Raven]

Its not just middle management though.

I was on a standard ward, miner surgery, roughly 20 beds. There was about 10 staff to look after 20 beds (it wasn't even full)

fag packet maths, those people probably earn, lets say 20k, add another 10k for non salary costs per head. 300,000k a year just to staff an extremely low dependence ward. Add in consumables etc, another 200k (Wild guess) The amount of times they changed empty beds for something to do, or moved patients from one side of the room to another, again for something to do was silly, each time filling a bin up with perfectly fine consumables that probably cost twice what they should do to start with.

 

[Gwadien]

Its not just middle management though.

I was on a standard ward, miner surgery, roughly 20 beds. There was about 10 staff to look after 20 beds (it wasn't even full)

fag packet maths, those people probably earn, lets say 20k, add another 10k for non salary costs per head. 300,000k a year just to staff an extremely low dependence ward. Add in consumables etc, another 200k (Wild guess) The amount of times they changed empty beds for something to do, or moved patients from one side of the room to another, again for something to do was silly, each time filling a bin up with perfectly fine consumables that probably cost twice what they should do to start with.

As I say, I have no idea about hospitals, they are different to schools, since some are doing OK, and some are struggling big time.

 

[Gwadien]

I call @Tilda to testify before the Freddy commission!

 

[Job]

Seeing as the NHS is basically nationalised hospitals, I don't trust Labour to do anything but make it more wasteful.

 

[Raven]

Well that is pretty much all they did, buy votes in the public sector.

 

[Bodhi]

Trusts are Tory. Lack of centralisation is Tory. Refusing to accept the concept of a natural monopoly is Tory. Ideological tinkering with the NHS which only fucks it up more is deeply Tory.

http://www.nhshistory.net/foundation.pdf

Seems the current Trust set up, and lot of ideological tinkering went on in 2000, must admit I'm struggling to remember who was in power then.

Ah I remember now, it was the same lot who decided privatising GP Surgeries and Dentists was a good idea.

 

[Raven]

I know image shouldn't matter but Corbyn really doesn't do himself any favours, he looks like he inherited his suit from a fat guy who might have died in it.

 

[Bodhi]

‘I'm more or less convinced that the election wasn't called to upset you’

Um wut?

 

[BloodOmen]

Greens call for electoral pact with Labour and Lib Dems to defeat Tories

 

[Ormorof]

NHS Tourism isn't helping either tbh, so many people travel to England purely to use the NHS then bugger off afterwards.

In reality how many people is this? Cost is negligible compared to rest of nhs

 

[BloodOmen]

In reality how many people is this? Cost is negligible compared to rest of nhs

"The government’s estimate of how much "deliberate health tourism" and those taking advantage of free NHS services cost the NHS every year was around 0.3% of NHS spending allocated to specific services in 2012/13. It’s still roughly around 0.3% of total health spending."

0.3% isn't exactly negligible - and that was back in 2012/13, i'd argue that its prob more now.


THAT SAID!

Upfront charges for NHS foreign patients in England - BBC News

That should help a bit I guess.

 

[DaGaffer]

http://www.nhshistory.net/foundation.pdf

Seems the current Trust set up, and lot of ideological tinkering went on in 2000, must admit I'm struggling to remember who was in power then.

Ah I remember now, it was the same lot who decided privatising GP Surgeries and Dentists was a good idea.

Trusts are the endgame of the concept of an "internal NHS market", that goes back to 1989.

 

[Ormorof]

"The government’s estimate of how much "deliberate health tourism" and those taking advantage of free NHS services cost the NHS every year was around 0.3% of NHS spending allocated to specific services in 2012/13. It’s still roughly around 0.3% of total health spending."

0.3% isn't exactly negligible - and that was back in 2012/13, i'd argue that its prob more now.


THAT SAID!

Upfront charges for NHS foreign patients in England - BBC News

That should help a bit I guess.

Would love to know the margin of error on that estimate, 0.3% is a large amount of money but when you think of the flipside that 99.7% is spent on other things that can easily be optimised it might not be worth fighting (and it may be solved by brexit anyway!)