NHS FINANCIAL LUNACY

The NHS BLACK HOLE MONEYPIT – In “The Telegraph”:

NHS England is employing more than 400 bureaucrats on over £100,000 each a year, led by a chief executive on a third more than her predecessor, The Telegraph can reveal. New data – published on the orders of Health Secretary Steve Barclay – show NHS England has hired 430 managers on salaries of at least £100,000.Of those, 109 are on at least £150,000, with salaries reaching up to £260,000. The “organogram”, which is being published for all central health bodies, shows a total of 529 senior officials at health organisations earning at least £100,000 – including 45 earning more than the Prime Minister’s £164,000. In addition to the 430 on six figures at NHS England, 53 are employed by the Department of Health and Social Care, with 21 at Health Education England, 16 at NHS Digital and nine at NHS Resolution. 

• “Diversity”Managers can earn up to THREE TIMES what nurses earn.
• Procurement? For many supplies it would be cheaper to buy retail over-the-counter from Boots than use the obscenely-expensive “procurement” process.
• The scarcity of medical staff means doctors are often paid THOUSANDS OF POUNDS to work over the weekend.
• You can’t SEE your local GP any more, at least in Thanet.
• There is sometimes a TWO-DAY WAIT for an ambulance.
• WAITING-LISTS are at an all-time length: cancer patients waiting weeks for urgent life-saving treatment.

UTTER BS, AND STILL
THEY WANT MORE BILLIONS.

The N.H.S. in Meltdown

WHY do we almost always have to wait till catastrophe hits us before taking effective action? The N.H.S. has been in a mess for YEARS, and it is getting WORSE – yet nothing is done to stop the rot – except pour more billions into a black hole; the N.H.S. has become an untouchable shibboleth.

The new government is apparently now promising that anyone needing to see their local G.P. should be guaranteed an appointment WITHIN TWO WEEKS! WOW!!!!! And YET …. In both France and Japan I can see my local G.P. THE SAME DAY and FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES (none of this “one thing per appointment and ten minutes and you’re out.” BS) , and it HAS BEEN THE SAME right throughout the COVID hysteria. The situation in England is far more than scandalous, but there is really no single adjective that does it justice.

Stephen Pollard in “The Daily Telegraph”: “On so many key measures, the NHS is a disaster. More than six million people are now on the official NHS waiting list for England. The usual response is to blame the pandemic. It has clearly had a major impact but the situation was dire long before that. In 2019 Britain was at the bottom of most World Health Organisation’s cancer league tables, with the lowest survival rate in five of seven common cancers. We are widely said to be at least a decade behind other countries. And not since 2015 has the NHS met its target to start treatment for urgent cases (not just for cancer) within two months.” He could have added: GPs refusing to actually see patients; people waiting hours for an ambulance; ambulances stacked up waiting to deliver patients in critical need of treatment to overflowing A&E departments; people dying of treatable diseases because they were not diagnosed and/or treated in time; absurd procurement costs; obscene payments to doctors to provide emergency and even normal cover.

WHY IS THERE NOT MASSIVE UPROAR? WHY DO THE PEOPLE SIT BACK PATIENTLY AND ASSUME NOTHING CAN BE DONE? Why don’t they look at the REST of the developed world and see how it’s done? It’s got to the point where it is worth living on the CONTINENT to be assured of getting prompt treatment.

The quality of the staff at the sharp end of treatment IS as good as anywhere in the world, but the PROVISION of sufficient staff, resources and their MANAGEMENT are a TOTAL SHAMBLES – WHICH IS THE FAULT OF THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT, LEFT & RIGHT. It is NOT a question of money. We spend much the same as most developed countries, but for MUCH WORSE RESULTS:

Time to Slay the Ultimate Shibboleth

From “The Daily Telegraph”:

Almost half of all NHS staff are managers, administrators or unqualified assistants, it has emerged, as Boris Johnson came under pressure to insist on health service reforms as the price of increased funding. The proportion of clinical staff who are professionally trained has declined from 55.5 per cent in 2013 to just 52.5 per cent now, meaning 47.5 per cent of staff have no medical qualifications. Separately, it has emerged that the number of NHS managers paid more than the Prime Minister is about to rise to more than 400. Some hospitals have as many as nine managers earning more than Mr Johnson’s £157,000.

MPs said the figures showed that with £36 billion extra going to the NHS and social care, funded by a 1.25 percentage point increase in National Insurance, it was time to have a root and branch review of NHS spending. One said it was time to have an “honest conversation” about the NHS to avoid the UK becoming “a health service with a country attached to it”

This REALLY has got beyond a joke. Just as with the BBC, FREE MONEY CORRUPTS AND RUINS. We ALL want a medical service “free at the point of delivery”, but not at this price. WE DO NOT WANT ALL THESE BUREAUCRATS. It does not need ONE bureaucrat for EACH medically-trained person. IT IS INSANE. And yet we now have this WOKE BS, TOO:

“NHS are advertising for 44 managers at £290K pa and 233 Equality and Diversity Managers at £75K pa yet they cancel taking blood samples because they haven’t got vials. In 2001 NHS cost 4% of the gross national product, now it costs 40% of GNP and they can’t take necessary blood samples.“

This so-called government has been in power for OVER A DECADE, yet has done NOTHING to reform the NHS. Its ONLY policy is to pour BILLIONS MORE down the NHS moneypit. Johnson is SURREALLY useless – and a LIAR.

“Read my lips: we will not be raising taxes on income, on VAT or National Insurance.” Boris Johnson in 2019.

THIS is the PPP (Porky Pie Party aka Tories) record.

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IN or OUT?

It would be far better for all if we stay in and get on with the job of leadership within the EU, rather than bellyaching all the time.

Yes, we must stay in and keep paying twenty MILLION GB NET every single day to support THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY Brussels penpushers who earn more than the British PM, and of course there is Borroso’s (et al) 300,000€ salary plus vast perks and hardly any tax because it is so awful to work in distant Brussels. Not forgetting the EIGHTY-NINE MILLION euros “lost” this year and the fact that the EU accounts are NEVER properly audited not to mention the SIX THOUSAND MILLION EURO (and counting) European Diplomatic Service led by a Foreign Secretary of a non-existant country OR indeed the fascist imposition on Greece of an ex ECB-GS crony after the democratically-elected PM of Greece dared to threaten to offer a referendum on the euro to his people.

Then there are the 60% youth unemployed all over the Mediterranean AND the utter LIES used to get Greece into the Eurozone for blatant political reasons PLUS the mad rush to set up a United States of Europe which NOT ONE SINGLE ONE of the EU’S FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION Citizens has voted, since – as we all know – our unelected Lords and Masters in Brussels know best.

It hardly seems worth mentioning the tsunami of competitiveness-busting legislation coming from Brussels or indeed the imposition on the UK of an obligation to accept MILLIONS of Eastern Europeans anxious to sup at the insane British welfare system in a country already chronically short of decent housing for its own people, while of course we have no more control over our fishing, our borders, our law, our work-related legislation or indeed much else.

You cannot “LEAD” inside the EU, which is basically a stitch-up between France and Germany, though France is  so economically incompetent that even the Germans’ stoic patience and residual war guilt are wearing a bit thin.

The EU was formed by France and Germany along with a few hapless hangers-on and is impregnated by their bureaucratic mentality. It CANNOT be reformed from within UNLESS Britain’s threat to leave is taken seriously, which it will NOT be UNLESS it is serious. This is a gigantic poker game but it is the ONLY way to get real change in the EU which – otherwise – is doomed to economic decline, apart from Germany, though its position is not as secure as many think.

Oh – and the new ECB headquarters is costing AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED MILLION euros (money being no object), while van Rompo’s new palace (anyone know what he does all day for his THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND EURO salary plus sod all tax?) cost a paltry THREE HUNDRED MILLION euros and counting.

And of course the MEPS (all earning at least double what our own MPs earn – and there’s that piffling tax again) get ANOTHER 200€ odd JUST FOR TURNING UP TO PARLIAMENT. Brilliant. You get paid an obscene salary and then a daily rate for actually turning up for work!! This is known in the trade as “NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT”.

YOU COULD NOT MAKE IT UP, and as the EU thunders towards banking and political union IT CAN ONLY GET WORSE.

It is UNAFFORDABLE, WASTEFUL AND IMMORAL. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but that is what it has become; a monster greedy for both power and money – OUR money.

Remember the statistic: TWENTY MILLION QUID NET EACH AND EVERY SINGLE DAY goes to the EU. How many desperately-needed houses could we build for that?

Van Rompuy costs us €22 million a year, and FOR WHAT?

Thankyou “The Telegraph” for this clear exposé of
the shameful and insane Brussels SPENDO-NAUGHT.

It is astonishing how so many people can become so detached from reality when they can so easily get their hands on other people’s money. Here is a SUMMARY of the statistics given in”The Telegraph”:

The President of the European Council – Hermann van Rompuy

• Herr Van Rompuy is paid €263,000 per year, double the salary of the British Prime Minister and £5,000 more than the President of the USA. Is this deliberate , to give the message that this position is more important than that of US President?
• The official description of this office is “to drive Europe forward”. (No, seriously). Richard Corbett, a former Labour MEP and Senior Aide to van Rompuy, said his job was about “getting consensus among 27 heads of state and government, who are prima donnas used to being in charge.” (Van Rompuy, of course, is not a Prima Donna, even though his position is essentially useless.)
• He pays a 24 per cent rate of tax (like all other EU officials whatever their salary level) and his personal annual travel budget will be £4 million.
• He has a staff of 60 people – a cabinet of 22, 10 body guards and 28 support staff. His total office budget will be £22.3 million.
• Now he is to have an ADDITIONAL foreign policy staff of more than 20 senior officials at the same time as the EU creates a separate, overlapping foreign service. This unit totally duplicates “work” already done by the Ashton bureaucracy.
• Van Rompuy’s offices have been lavishly decorated and equipped even though they are temporary while a €300,000,000 office block is built for his department. “He has the most expensive sofas of any EU official, his walls are hung with trendy art works, and he has the best cooks and wine cellar in Brussels. And, it’ll all be torn down when he gets his new office which will grander than anything ever seen here,” said one envious EU aide.
  

The President of EEAS, the new EU “Diplomatic Service” – Lady Ashton

• Lady Ashton, who has never been elected to any public office, earns £230,702 a year, £88,000 more than Mr Cameron and £96,000 more than William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary. She is the best paid female politician in the world, and controls a budget three times bigger than that of the British Foreign Office.
• Her public image is so disastrous she has demanded a new spin doctor paid for by us at a cost of €200,000 per year who will head up a “Press Unit” costing several million euros per year. This is in addition to other very expensive press services already run by the EU.
• Fifty of her senior officials are on the EU’s top two civil service pay grades and earn between £157,000 and £171,000 a year, higher salaries than the British Prime Minister’s £142,500. Another 64 of the new service’s diplomats and officials are just one rung below, with average salaries of £139,000, bringing to 114 the number of foreign service staff paid more than Mr Hague’s cabinet minister wage of £134,565.

Of course, in addition to these bloated salaries these officials also receive expenses so lavish and wide-ranging that ordinary electors would be staggered at the EU’s generosity with our money.

The point is that BOTH these posts are essentially useless empire-building. The EU is NOT a state and does NOT NEED either a President, a Foreign Secretary OR a diplomatic service. Europe has managed very well since the war WITHOUT all this vastly-expensive nonsense.

It might have been different if the EU elite had ANY commonsense about spending our money. THEY DO NOT. Because the money is so easily acquired from national governments, the EU has totally lost sight of the hard work that had to go into earning it by REAL workers in the REAL world. The idea that workers in low salaries in uncertain jobs in Scunthorpe in Britain are going to get value-for-money from FORTY-SIX EU “diplomats” sent to Barbados is stunningly-surreal idiocy.

These three appointments, created by the Lisbon Treaty (the two above plus the “Foreign Secretary”) which hardly ANY EU citizens had ANY direct say in (and those that did had to vote again till they “got it right”) are all a total waste of our money, created by the EU elite bandwagon to “drive Europe forward”. This very phrase is patronising drivel. What “drives Europe forward” is not Lady Ashton presiding over a monstrous bureaucracy costing SIX BILLION euros and counting but EUROPE’S WORKERS, who are over-taxed, over-indebted, over-reglemented and whose remuneration is surreally-insignificant to those of the above-named officials who actually do no real or productive “work” at all. They create NO WEALTH whatsoever for Europe; they merely consume that created at great effort by others and in the process produce mountains of stifling paperwork.

This situation is a continental disgrace and will in fact not “drive Europe forward”
but set it back for decades when the European milch-cow public eventually revolts.

MEPs

• Strasbourg: Under EU treaties, MEPs are required to attend 12 sessions per year in Strasbourg. As a result, more than 700 MEPs, plus about 3,000 aides and piles of documents, have to travel the 450 km from Brussels to Strasbourg each month, in order to attend the week-long plenary sessions. The arrangement, strongly defended by France, costs around €200 million per year to the taxpayer and is estimated to release 20,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. This arrangement in Strasbourg, on the Rhine between France and Germany, is supposed to symbolize peace in Europe …..
• MEPs have just been awarded a new expenses deal to give them an automatic €91,000 per annum without their having to produce a single receipt or justification of any expense whatsoever. This comes on top of a basic salary of €80,000.
• As hundreds of thousands of European workers face a Christmas with little money from their part-time or low-paid job – or of course no job at all – they can at least compensate their misery by remembering that MEPS will get this Christmas a £5,000 backdated payrise of 3.7% to help them struggle through the festive period.
• MEPs are supposed to represent ordinary Europeans, but given their lavish remuneration they naturally get sucked into the Brussels spendocracy ethic – or rather non-ethic. How many challenged the lunacy of this new “diplomatic service”?  How many protest against the insane spending of the elite? On the contrary, they collectively demanded a SIX PER CENT increase in the EU budget this year at a time when ordinary citizens in almost every EU country are reeling under the onslaught of this financial and economic crisis, which of course – impinges NOT ONE JOT on any EU official. Indeed, the new “diplomatic service” has created a frenzied bonanza of new jobs and promotions in Brussels, all paid for by money that most European nations actually DO NOT HAVE. ALL OF IT HAS TO BE BORROWED. If the EU wants to “drive Europe forward”, it should concentrate on REDUCING COSTS, REDUCING NATIONAL BORROWING and on trying to help European firms become more competitive in face of the Asian onslaught, which is ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.

EU INSANITY

A catastrophic and utter disgrace in the EU. Absolute power has totally corrupted all sane thinking there might once have been. We are supposed to be in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since 1945; thousands laid off, hard up, companies closing down, banks refusing to lend, yet there are no bounds to  the insane political and financial greed of the  madmen and women running the EU – most of them unelected. This is from the Daily Mail:

• 7,000 Eurocrats in 137 embassies worldwide cost a mind-boggling £5.8bn

• Run by a £313,000-a-year New Labour apparatchik who hasn’t been elected by a single voter

Why will there be 46 “diplomats” on the Caribbean island of Barbados? 53 more in Madagascar? What are FIFTY full-time EU paid workers supposed to do on these tiny islands that is so urgent to our national interests?

The idiocy of all this is staggering. The EU is not a country; it is a common market, but of course that is not enough for the power-mad clique in Brussels. One can sympathize with people suffering from delusions of grandeur, but not when they indulge them using our money. The EU clique has become a bloated, arrogant and disgusting leech, it has perverted all the high hopes that believers had. Why does greed destroy everything?