Tales of a C3, a Goddess and some BMW's.

[DickieG]

Very few people are going to die while waiting for a routine operation, and certainly not from the delay.

That's not what the Governments Co-operation and Competition Panel reported.

Another article in The Telegraph reports "NHS managers are deliberately delaying operations as they wait for patients either to die or go private in order to save money, according to an official report."

Even taking away the issue about hoping patients will die before getting surgery whether directly or indirectly from the delay, to deliberately delay surgery is disgusting in my books and anyone found doing so without good cause should at the very least be sacked for Gross Misconduct and preferably prosecuted. Silly me I thought that we lived in a civilised society where the duty of health workers was to get people well again asap.

[Xaccers]

Very few people are going to die while waiting for a routine operation, and certainly not from the delay.

That's not what the Governments Co-operation and Competition Panel reported.

Another article in The Telegraph reports "NHS managers are deliberately delaying operations as they wait for patients either to die or go private in order to save money, according to an official report."

Even taking away the issue about hoping patients will die before getting surgery whether directly or indirectly from the delay, to deliberately delay surgery is disgusting in my books and anyone found doing so without good cause should at the very least be sacked for Gross Misconduct and preferably prosecuted. Silly me I thought that we lived in a civilised society where the duty of health workers was to get people well again asap.

Actually they found that people would remove themselves from the list, which was then interpretted as meaning going private or passing away.
My grandad had a hip operation, a week later he got pneumonia and died.
Had he not recieved the operation he would have "removed" himself from the list, but he did not die of an issue related to the operation he was due.
Of course we can't expect the great British media not to scare monger and sensationalise it into the impression that people in need of life saving operations are being strung out in the hope that they'll snuff it and therefore save money. Of course it has nothing to do with people in such need, this is about routine operations such as draining fluid from someone's knee, or replacing a hip, or even having a wisdom tooth removed.
Doesn't make it right that people have been made to wait longer than they need to be, but to suggest that people are dying because they're having to wait for a knee op is totally wrong and insulting to the medical staff within the NHS.

[DickieG]

Actually they found that people would remove themselves from the list, which was then interpretted as meaning going private or passing away.
My grandad had a hip operation, a week later he got pneumonia and died.
Had he not recieved the operation he would have "removed" himself from the list, but he did not die of an issue related to the operation he was due.
Of course we can't expect the great British media not to scare monger and sensationalise it into the impression that people in need of life saving operations are being strung out in the hope that they'll snuff it and therefore save money. Of course it has nothing to do with people in such need, this is about routine operations such as draining fluid from someone's knee, or replacing a hip, or even having a wisdom tooth removed.
Doesn't make it right that people have been made to wait longer than they need to be, but to suggest that people are dying because they're having to wait for a knee op is totally wrong and insulting to the medical staff within the NHS.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your Grandfather Xac, but the example you give of him doesn't address the issue the Government panel reported which has nothing to do with the "great British media hyping up a story to scare monger" neither is it insulting to medical staff within the NHS as they are not the ones controlling waiting times, faceless non medical managers do that.

Lord Carter of Coles, the chairman of the investigating panel, said: “Commissioners have a difficult job in the current financial climate, but patients’ rights are often being restricted without a valid and visible reason.”

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley responded:

"This is exactly why we need to put patients' interests first. Too many PCTs have been operating in a cynical environment where they can game the system - and in which political targets, particularly the maximum 18 week waiting time target, are used to actually delay treatment.

"When GPs, specialist doctors and nurses are making the decisions, as they will under our plans, they will plan care on the basis of the clinical needs of patients and their right to access the best service, including the least possible waiting time."

I readily admit that my condition isn't exactly life threatening (unless I stumble on the stairs as a result of not being able to move normally) and would never attempt to suggest in the slightest that I should be put ahead of someone who's life is being threatened but I find it distasteful and immoral that someone who I've never met or ever will or have even read my medical notes decides that on order to promote themselves within their role can delay my and others treatment for their own purposes of gaining a tick in a box or a larger bonus payment.

Maybe my conscience is too sensitive but quite how these people can sleep at night knowing that others are suffering in whatever way for longer than necessary is beyond me.

Does this policy save money in the greater scheme of things? I'd suggest its somewhat debatable if the person concerned cannot work, in my own instance in 1987 I suffered serious burns (47%) and needed countless skin graft operations but had to wait for months and months for them due to the NHS being starved of money. In the meantime I as a public servant was off work in the immediate time following the injury for just over a year, partly due to waiting times and partly due to the NHS not being able to afford more expensive dressings that cut the recovery time down by half. So I had to wait longer than necessary for an operation that I was always going to need and in the meantime I was unable to work, I can't see what the NHS saved by having this policy but I do know that a different Government department had greater losses due to my longer absence.

It really is a case of that old story of everyone protecting their own budget but as a result the overall costs are far greater and that's just the financial costings.

[Xaccers]

None of that suggests that people are dying due to not getting the routine operations, and it is that suggestion from the papers which I object to, because it implies that medical staff who must surely be aware of this are willing to keep quiet and allow people to die.
That clearly isn't the case, if someone is waiting for a routine operation and they die it will not be due to waiting for that operation.

Now, hopefully I've made myself clear, moving on to the other points I totally agree that keeping somone off work longer than they need to be is not good for the economy.
Keeping someone in pain for longer than they need to be is frankly immoral and I too wonder how these people sleep at night.
Fudging the figures, especially with public money gets right on my wick.
The millions DERA used to waste simply to artificially inflate their budgets for the next year, the tax payer funded golden handshakes for staff, the staff who'd get a full wage for 4 hours work a day, the millions spent on a new site at Farnborough that suddenly became unsuitable and has since been demolished.

[DickieG]

None of that suggests that people are dying due to not getting the routine operations, and it is that suggestion from the papers which I object to, because it implies that medical staff who must surely be aware of this are willing to keep quiet and allow people to die.
That clearly isn't the case, if someone is waiting for a routine operation and they die it will not be due to waiting for that operation.

I don't see at any point that its suggested that delaying an operation causes patients to die, what it mentions is that some Primary Care Trusts factor in that they can potentially save money by delaying operations in the hope that the patient dies first. In my book should anyone do any more than use dark humour around that subject has no place working in the NHS.

Fudging the figures, especially with public money gets right on my wick.
The millions DERA used to waste simply to artificially inflate their budgets for the next year, the tax payer funded golden handshakes for staff, the staff who'd get a full wage for 4 hours work a day, the millions spent on a new site at Farnborough that suddenly became unsuitable and has since been demolished.

In that case you won't like the Governments plans for the NHS of handing budgets over to Doctors. This happened many years ago in the Police where each division/borough/unit etc were given their own budget to spend/control. I think it was towards the end of the Thatcher era or John Major when it started and ever since bucket-loads of money has been thrown down the drain year after year.

What happens is each year a unit/Supervisor (or now read Dr) receives a stated budget on April 1st then for the following ten months very little money is released in case some major incident occurs then come February/March when they realise that they have thousands of money left, they throw money (overtime) at any stupid idea including and I'm not joking, giving out parking tickets (when the Police did that, they don't now) as its commonly feared that if the budget is underspent at the end of the year then they will have a lower budget next year so spending every last penny of it is an absolute must. Large bonus payments are given to senior officers controlling budgets for remaining within budget but not extra payments for coming in under budget. To an extent you can see this with road repairs, quiet all year then loads of roadworks starting after Christmas.

I bet I've cheered you up no end Xac!!

[Xaccers]

the problem is people think budget means lump of money, rather than spending plan.
if departments were forced to do it properly, they'd have to present their spending plan for the next year in Jan/Feb to be battled over before the new financial year, with an emergency fund put aside.
Make coming in on or under budget one of the requirements for any bonuses and managerial pay rises.
Or implement a similar bonus scheme to what we have where I work (if sales hit a certain target, 80 people get £125, if a higher target is reached more people get £125, and if a top target is reached everyone gets it), so if the dept comes in under budget each month, that money is distributed amongst random workers.

[DickieG]

so if the dept comes in under budget each month, that money is distributed amongst random workers.

Crikey, how are they selected? I can see all manner of allegations around favouritism unless its done on strict rotation.

[Deanxm]

Make coming in on or under budget one of the requirements for any bonuses and managerial pay rises.

This will never work either, you will have managers everywhere running everything as tight as possible aiming for a nice bonus at the end of the year.

My views of government has been tainted forever today after a meeting with Chris hughne Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, surrounded by an army of busy bodies that are there to hide him away should anyone ask the wrong question and make sure that he gets what he wants ie a good photo visiting the local green industry when in fact he was invited to talk with us and just rolled up for the photo's and was then ushered away quickly before anyone had the chance to say a word.................... he spent a long time at the wind turbine developement centre though that the government has just pumped 6million into after they walked out of there other state of the art factory 1 mile down the road because they would not get funding if they stayed oin the old factory............ strange to find out the the priminister's brother in law stands to gain a lot from wind farm development as does the above mentioned minister, i wonder why so much of our money is sent to develope an energy source that WILL NEVER WORK then am i turning into a grumpy old git or seeing the light so far as our leaders are concerned....................

Sorry to hear of you poor health Richard, hope its all sorted soon.

D

[Xaccers]

so if the dept comes in under budget each month, that money is distributed amongst random workers.

Crikey, how are they selected? I can see all manner of allegations around favouritism unless its done on strict rotation.

At our place names are pulled out of a hat (well bucket) as part of the monthly update meeting for over a year with no issues.

I've worked for companies that only give bonuses when certain targets are met, such as one where we met all our support targets but because their sales team didn't wine and dine enough people despite us being told by the CFO that we'd slogged our guts out, we got no reward.
Do you have any idea how demoralising that is?
At our place now, we all pull our weight, we all know there's not enough money spare to give everyone a reasonable bonus, so it's left up to chance. I've just won (it'll buy road tax for Cassy tomorrow as long as the DVLA play ball) but it's been about 7 months since I won before that, no one has a bad word to say about it because we all have as much chance of having our names picked as anyone else.

At the moment in the public sector waste is rewarded. That has to change, waste should be frowned upon, and savings should be rewarded.

[Deanxm]

At the moment in the public sector waste is rewarded. That has to change, waste should be frowned upon, and savings should be rewarded.

I dont think wast is rewarded in the public sector but waste is rife because the public sector isnt run like a business is it.
Look at the roads for instance, a guy in a van and a team in a very expensive X-ray lorry patrol the roads doing not much other than hemorage money until they find a defect, this defect has to be of a certain size to qualify so the defect next to it that is 2 inches smaller will not be repaired, anyway this guy highlights the defect with paint, a subcontractor is then notified and they will send someone to assess the defect, a gang will then be sent to repair the defect (leaving the smaller one that will need repairing in 3 weeks next to it though).
All of this to make a repair that takes 15minutes and costs maybe £50, trouble is if you sack the council teams, then get rid of the lazy high cost contractors you have a lot of people out of work, angry, who will no longer vote for the evil instigators of the cutbacks that cost them their jobs, nobody is going to give themselves the axe and since the biggest employer in the country is the government you kind of get stuck.

Same thing with public sector workers striking over pay freezes and pension plans, i bet their diamond slippers must chafe something awefull too.

D

[DickieG]

My views of government has been tainted forever today after a meeting with Chris hughne Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, surrounded by an army of busy bodies that are there to hide him away should anyone ask the wrong question and make sure that he gets what he wants ie a good photo visiting the local green industry when in fact he was invited to talk with us and just rolled up for the photo's and was then ushered away quickly before anyone had the chance to say a word.................... he spent a long time at the wind turbine developement centre though that the government has just pumped 6million into after they walked out of there other state of the art factory 1 mile down the road because they would not get funding if they stayed oin the old factory............ strange to find out the the priminister's brother in law stands to gain a lot from wind farm development as does the above mentioned minister, i wonder why so much of our money is sent to develope an energy source that WILL NEVER WORK then am i turning into a grumpy old git or seeing the light so far as our leaders are concerned....................

You're not grumpy Dean, just seeing things as they are, corrupt! Its like this phone hacking business, all manner of covering up being done in order to hide politicians skulduggery until The Guardian dug deep enough to make it difficult to continue along that path and even now both sides appear to be still at it (NI and politicians).

Its quite amazing the number of stories I've heard about politicians and in particular Royalty from contacts I have working closely alongside them yet some really spicy stories that would fill the papers for weeks if not months are never mentioned as they have agreements not to publish certain stories for fear of undermining the establishment.

Sorry to hear of you poor health Richard, hope its all sorted soon.

Thanks for that Dean, after struggling again this morning I've improved as the day has progressed, fingers crossed that'll continue tonight and in the morning so that I can cancel my appointment with the Dr tomorrow.

At the moment in the public sector waste is rewarded. That has to change, waste should be frowned upon, and savings should be rewarded.

Exactly but for some reason the government are hell bent on "Handing budgets over to local control" which causes the huge amount of waste I describe, it might sound great on paper supposedly doing away with back room staff but going by what I've seen over many years it fills me with horror as its a truly shameful waste of resources.

[DickieG]

I recieved a letter today informing me of the date for the operation on my back, the 26th October, hurrah only twelve weeks to go

Maximum time between consultation and op for routine operations is 18 weeks, so October would be within that period, although if it's in the second half of Oct I'd wonder if the managers have implemented a 15 week minimum.

Looks like they have.

[DickieG]

Some very disturbing news was brought to my attention this evening on a most vile subject about one of my past colleagues in this story. I'd heard that he'd been dismissed some time ago with the suspicion it was for something like this but to then see the details, awful, simply awful. To think that I worked and socialised with this pervert and helped him right at the start of his career really brings home that you never know enough about others as obviously not one of us had a clue what he was up to. I wouldn't mind but he has kids including one suffering from Downs Syndrome, he was seen to be a happy go lucky bloke who loved playing rugby, as he wasn't seen to be the sharpest of people he had the nickname of "Gump". I and others struggled to work out how he ever managed to get in the job let alone get to Sergeant.

Quite how he wasn't jailed is beyond me, certain things occur in the justice system that make me seriously wonder whether there are dark forces or shall I say 'Secret Societies' that have influence on judgements. Alternatively throwing a shaving foam pie in the face of Rupert Murdoch gets you six weeks inside, how does that work?

Even worse is that about 4-5 years ago another colleague who we used to rip the you know what out of for never having been seen with a woman and ran a young boys football team was jailed for interfering with the kids.

I worked with both of these perverts on a team of just ten people possibly at the same time at some point, with those statistics I'm left wondering just how many people are like this, words such as shocking, disgusting, vile, don't come close.

Link now edited

[Deanxm]

I cant see the story in the link but then i can well imagine i dont want to either, people like this are in all walks of life, unfortunatly they are more successfull when they occupy positions of high regard within the comunity and yes it is disgusting that someone would even think about doing what i thinks going on here.
The really sad thing is you will never be able to stop it either.............

D

[CitroJim]

We had a case at our place about 12 years ago. Although I never worked with the character, I knew him vaguely...

He was caught after browsing for it on a computer at work. I mean, you have to be completely and utterly stupid to do that. One of my colleagues actually caught him in the act. I don't think my colleague has ever quite recovered from what he saw that day.

Following that, he was jailed for a short time and afterward he was allowed to return to work. He did it again very shortly after, caught again and jailed for a much longer term. Never heard anything further of him after that. Hopefully he's still rotting in jail.

Another case many years ago now, back in the days of dial-up access to the Internet, one person was caught using the office Internet pipe to download stuff which he sneaked out on backup tapes! Another monumentally stupid individual who was quickly dismissed.

So yes, I fear it is more prevalent than might be first thought. The first individual we always thought was a bit odd, a bit creepy perhaps but we could never really articulate quite what. Just a gut feeling and to be honest, when it came out what he'd done, once the initial shock wore off we were generally not entirely surprised it was this.

Sounds like your Sgt. Gump was of the same sort of character Richard.