General Election

[Miss Bellum]

The UK people rejected AV which is not the same as rejecting any change to the system. People can change their minds as well.

I think people might be more inclined to want change now that it is becoming so much clearer that a system designed for a 2 party system doesnt work where there are multiple parties.

Plaid Cymru got less than a million votes and 3 MPs. The Greens got 1.1 million and 1 MP. UKIP got 3.8 million and 1 MP and the SNP got 56 MPs on 1.5 million.

That does not strike me as a fair way of doing things and I really do hope that we get PR in the future. I think that all of the parities have some good ideas and the country would benefit from working together, not scoring points.

I think that if people actually think their vote will be counted and will make a difference they will be more included to go vote.

 

[sue_88]

I absolutely don't want PR when there are parties and politicians like UKIP & Nigel Farage around. With a PR system I believe they'd have 70+ seats! No thank you.

I would still say the majority would vote no to any change. I'm fully aware the referendum was for AV but I personally believe the result would have been, and would be, a no.

 

[emyandpotato]

I absolutely don't want PR when there are parties and politicians like UKIP & Nigel Farage around. With a PR system I believe they'd have 70+ seats! No thank you.

I would still say the majority would vote no to any change. I'm fully aware the referendum was for AV but I personally believe the result would have been, and would be, a no.

I agree that UKIP getting so much power would be awful, but it feels like there cannot be real change when people can't vote for the parties they want to because of the way the system works. Back in 2010 Lib Dems got seven million votes and 57 seats compared to Labour's 8.5 million votes and 250 seats. And a lot of young people in particular feel they aren't represented when the parties they vote for, like the Greens, don't stand a chance regardless of what vote percentage they get.

The population as a whole is obviously kind of disenchanted with voting and maybe a total reform that makes each vote truly count would make all of the difference.

 

[Miss Bellum]

I strongly dislike UKIP and I am seriously relieved they didn't make the gains expected. But regardless of how I feel about individual parties, I do feel strongly that every vote should carry equal weight.

 

[Tasha]

That's exactly how I feel. It isn't right to keep it as it is as it isn't proportional representation. Regardless of our feelings on any particular party, that's the right thing if the British people are voting for it.

A petition if anyone is interested in electoral reform.

https://action.makeseatsmatchvotes....1754&ea.campaign.id=38262&ea.tracking.id=msmv

 

[icklemonster]

The chance of the Conservatives agreeing to proportional representation or any change to the voting system is zero. They would have lost 90 seats in this election! I just read a very true comment on the Independent that it is like selling the idea of Christmas to turkeys.
The only way the system will be reformed is if in 2020 (or any future election) a main party has to go to a coalition again and each small party refuses to join unless a referendum is held on PR!

 

[Quartz]

I think the other thing is I dont think you can look at the figures for Plaid Cyrmu, DUP and the SNP and directly compare them to UKIP. They are national parties and the proportion of votes that received in Wales, DUP and Scotland (particularly SNP) is far greater than the number who voted for UKIP.

The other problem is we need a working government and for that you need a majority otherwise nothing would ever get done. I may not be a Conservative but I am pleased that at least we have that. No country has it right and democracy always needs to be tempered with the reality that it needs to be workable.

 

[Midnight_Fairy]

I hate UKIP but fair is fair. Seems completely flawed. I know a few people who won't be so happy about the results in 3 or 4 yrs. We need proper protests here not just sit by and watch our country wilt away without a say.

 

[Tasha]

Quartz I understand what you are saying but I think it's important to remember that we are one whole country when it comes to parliament and why should someone in Scotland or Wales or even someone who voted for the big two vote be worth more than someone else just because they voted for a smaller party? More people would vote for smaller parties too, if they thought they had a chance but so many feel they have to vote tactically to stop either conservative by voting labour or vice versa.

 

[R_x]

Does anyone know much about privatising the nhs? Will it defiantly happen?

 

[sue_88]

Privatising the NHS isn't necessarily a bad thing IMO. It will seek out and source private providers for a particular service, who of course gain a profit but it doesn't mean you'll be paying for it (outside of the usual tax contributions).

Nobody in this country is looking to turn our system into the U.S. insurance only system, which is what a lot of people who have decided to not read up and form their own warped opinion are believing and spreading round.

What is important to remember is the nhs is not a hotel, a restaurant, a taxi service, and if we can reduce the money spent on things like unnecessary extra beds for non patients, food for non patients, unneeded ambulances there's more money in the pot for elsewhere.

 

[lau86]

I work in the nhs. I've never met anyone who works in the nhs that thinks privatisation is a good thing. I'm in mental health at the moment and we've seen drug and alcohol services that share our building being sold off, not as much staff there etc. Some of our counselling services have been sold off to cheaper providers despite knowing we can do the best job. This is my own practical experience of a very small piece of the action. David Cameron's government has helped close down valuable rehab beds and people are really struggling. It's absolutely disgusting tbh. I appreciate the nhs isn't an endless pit of money and say what you like about the conservatives but I believe they are destroying the nhs as we know it
Eta we have those one to one midwives around here which my paediatrician colleagues hate as anecdotally they always bring in very poorly babies
Eta again! Morale is really low amongst nhs workers as David Cameron gives off the opinion that were all lazy and don't care. He is looking at cutting antisocial pay. It's a vocation for me I went into it to help not be belittled

 

[icklemonster]

Does anyone know much about privatising the nhs? Will it defiantly happen?

I have really tried researching this question and honestly I can't see the wood for the trees on how much privatisation will happen with the masses of conflicting propaganda out there!

I know that under labour 2.9% of NHS spending went to the private sector which rose to 6% under the Tories. The idea behind much of the privatisation seems to makes sense to me - such as sending patients to private treatment centres to cut waiting times, or where there isn't a big enough need for it to be solely funded under the NHS.

A lot of people seem to be getting the wrong end of the stick and believe that privatisation means they will automatically have to pay for all their medical bills or get private healthcare. That's what we pay NI for. There are lots of countries who offer free healthcare through similar national schemes but have far higher levels of privatisation.

The issue most people have with privatisation is it is if you look over the pond to the USA, and how mixing profits and healthcare usually results in a worse level of care, costing a lot more money (i.e. compare the cost of giving birth in the UK/USA and there is a vast difference, yet birth related deaths are higher in the US). Privatisation doesn't always mean that though! Look how many people have private healthcare in the UK and enjoy excellent care.

One question is would going down this route then put the NHS on the brink of collapse if they can no longer afford the expensive bills? Personally, I find this highly unlikely and complete scaremongering. As I said on the previous post if any party does something to Great Britain having free healthcare then it is going to lose nearly all the vote. The tories are in a very weak position, while they have a majority, it will only take a few by-elections to turn them into a minority and then nothing will get passed. I don't think doing some things I have read like making people pay to see their GP is going to help promote them, when they need to stay strong.

They won the election through a huge cross section of society voting for them, alienating those who couldn't afford such a trip to the GP will send them backwards!
It's great so many people are speaking out about the NHS though and making a noise, just to remind the Government of the importance of it, but on the same note, I'm not worrying about it after my own research xx

 

[sue_88]

I also think seeing the shit storm the lib dems went through on Friday morning, the Tories are going to know that when you annoy a certain section the general public you will suffer big style.

I think charging for certain things in the NHS system is also a good thing. Charging for missed appointments, charging for a non emergency ambulance (I.e transport home when a taxi would suffice).

Good post icklemonster, I too found that researching it is a very cloudy mess.

 

[lau86]

There are people who attend a&e all the time, they're called 'regulars'. It used to be stamped on their notes. Would charging them change their behaviour? Would they even pay? Why do they even come to a&e all the time?! No one got to the bottom of it we just made sure they were ok and chucked them out again. They probably need therapy not fines. Conservative/ labour/ others is much more an attitudinal thing than is really being mentioned IMO

 

[Tasha]

I personally don't believe privatising is good for the NHS, purely because it becomes profit focused rather than patient focused.

My next door neighbour relies on transport home from the hospital after his appointments, he is a pensioner and simply couldn't afford to pay a taxi home again. They only provide transport home when there is a medical need from what I gather. So whilst that may look like wasting money, the people that use it will be on low incomes and unable to go home by public transport, the alternative may be people just not going to appointments they need.

 

[Midnight_Fairy]

I don't like the idea either. What about people with life long conditions?

 

[lisa1980]

I also work in the NHS and am anti privatisation.

I don't think any government will openly suggest privatising the NHS as of course the backlash would be tremendous, but the aggressive campaign of eroding respect for the NHS and trust in its staff (by setting completely unachievable targets with no more funding and then claiming it's unfit for purpose when they're not met, closing a&es so nearby ones get swamped and then blaming GPs, A&E staff etc, continuous negative publicity about the staff and outcomes) is, imo, to create an image of it as so useless that they can swing public opinion towards privatising at least parts of it. Plus a lot of the money wasted is not spent on patients but on managers who never set foot in an a&e yet get paid a fortune to govern how it works.

My issue is not so much about paying for treatment but I also really worry about the conflict of interests privatisation would encourage. I trust when I see a specialist that I'm given the right advice for my condition, including being told when no further investigation or treatment is needed. If that specialist stood to gain from suggesting specific things (directly or indirectly) then the idea of acting in a patient's best interests becomes clouded.

The cuts in social care are, imo, a major factor as to why the NHS is struggling. In every hospital I've ever worked in the major issue is bed-blocking by elderly patients who are not actually necessarily sick (when they come in anyway....they usually get sick if they stay in the hospital long enough) but who cannot care for themselves any more and need to be placed into a care/nursing home. The wait can be months due to the extreme lack of funding in this area so they stay in a hospital bed, costing thousands and picking up bugs.

Healthcare, social care, housing etc are all interlinked and cuts in one will inevitably have huge impact on the others. Treating them as entirely separate entities helps no one.

 

[Rhio92]

Some things I don't see a problem with making private such as hospital meals, security and hospital transport. But some things make me so scared. When I was in the mother and baby unit, any agency staff came from an outside agency rather than NHSP bank, and most of them were horrendous. They just obviously couldn't care less, and we all used to dread the nights, knowing we were pretty much on our own It was awful. The reason agency staff were used so often was because staff had been cut so much. And that is what I'm scared the whole of the NHS will become like. Patients shouldn't be made to feel like burdens or feel alone whilst in hospital because staff are stretched to the absolute limit. It's becoming unsafe. If any one of us in the unit felt like we needed to hurt ourselves or something we had no one to turn to. And if, God forbid, one of us had managed to commit suicide (for example), it would have been the usual 'uncaring nurses let patient commit suicide' all over the news.

 

[lindseymw]

Lau86, that has been my experience of mental health....however, I was employed under the non-nhs service.

Originally, the IAPT service was a consortium between the NHS and 5 mental health charities. It worked incredibly well as we had a lot of different services (Employment support, drug & alcohol etc) that we could refer to directly. We covered 4 ccgs and had 20+ therapists covering each area. Patients were waiting between 1 & 4 weeks from referral.

After Conservatives came in, they introduced AQP (Any Qualified Provider.) The service had to split up and put in a bid each to continue with IAPT separately. The funding wasn't viable for any of the services. Over night, we went from having 20+ staff in each ccg to 15 staff covering all 4 ccg.

We had a penalty to pay every time we didn't meet targets (no service ever managed to hit the targets.) A year later, funding was cut even further and higher penalties was introduced.

It was no longer patient focused as the service couldn't afford to be. Limits on how many sessions a patient could have came into force.

As we were no longer working with the NHS, we lost the direct referral route to Secondary Care...so anyone needing immediate mental health support had to go back to the GP and ask for referral (just what a person in crisis needs!)

AQP is where the NHS is going and it's not good way to go. Services will go under, the care required will not be given purely because the funding is not there.

As I said before, they have closed 2 hospitals (including Minor Injuries department), closed one walk in centre (none of the GP surgeries provide out of hours services) and in the midst of closing the last one.

A&E is now at breaking point as where people would normally go to the other places, they can't. It's all well and good saying "don't go to A&E unless it's an emergency" but if you require medical attention and there is literally no where else to attend...what are you supposed to do?