What the hell do I pay tax for??

I've had a run of bad luck in the last couple of years in terms of my health. This means I've spent far more time than I'd like in various medical places, ranging from the gp, to a and e, to various specialists.

I can't say I noticed very many 'dopey mothers' with their 'sprogs' while there.

I think you'll find that most parents are actually very sensible when deciding whether or not their child needs to be seen by a qualified medic. Equally I think you'll find that as conditions can change far more rapidly in a child with their undeveloped immune system than in a healthy adult, most doctors actually encourage caution and insist that parents play it safe. As a parent myself, I can guarantee you, you don't put your child in a room full of germ infested people and give up potentially several hours of your life unless you think it's necessary.

In fact the reason the NHS is so rubbish is purely down to appalling management. Too much of it has been privatised. Private companies bill the NHS per consultation. So to make the best profit, you need more consultations. Operations are less profitable. That means you get people like me. I saw a gp numerous times. I had x rays and blood tests. All over many months. All to determine why I was slowly dying. How much would that have cost? I had to actually collapse unconscious and be rushed to hospital before simple rest and antibiotics put me on the road to recovery.

Then I smashed my foot. That was a year ago. I've seen two GPs, 3 consultations with a podiatrist, I've seen an out of hours GP after the repeated imbalance from one injury caused a new and extremely painful injury when a tendon failed, and another GP who diagnosed arthritis without even examining me after I reported that both my knees had failed due to repetitive strain injury all caused by the one failed joint in my foot. The latest GP referred me to a specialist. The department bounced me back to yet another podiatrist despite my record showing that podiatry had already had 3 goes at fixing me and failed. I must be costing the NHS and absolute fortune. Yet if the system had placed enough trust in my gp to accept that if he says I need to see a bone specialist, then I need to see a bone specialist, chances are they could have saved maybe half a dozen consultations.

 

Which points to private insurance for sport and other endeavours
Walk up a mountain, a daily occurrence for the public, fall off and have the NHS fix it for free
Kick the hell out of a plank of wood or punch bag and injure yourself Ok the NHS will fix it for free
Gob off in a Pub and get kicked half to death OK the NHS will fix it for free
Run a marathon, kidding you are fit and almost drop dead at the end OK the NHS will fix it for free

Then the Head of the council on £20k more than the Prime Ministers salary

NHS just needs stern control, If you turn up at AnE With a sprained wrist then you have to pay,
If you call an ambulance, and you can walk and talk, then charge for false call out, they are not taxi's
Educate mothers on child care and illness, Jimmy falling of his bike and skinting his knee is not an ambulance call, and AnE, Clean it and buy some Germoline (other brands are available)

 

Talk to me GP neighbour and he'll tell you a different story. They get bought in for things as stupid as teething, the trotts bought on by too much orange juice and to have a graze cleaned up and bandaged! All time wasted that could be put to better use in his opinion.

We all have bad spells. I contracted Weil's disease and glandular fever within the space of six months a few years ago.
And to add my name to the "wall of shame" a few months ago I broke a toe. I knew it was broken, didn't need a hospital to tell me that so I strapped it up. At christmas they're going to break it and reset it properly using pins. On the plus side they're also going to do the two metacarpals that I ignored a few years ago at the same time

 

That would be nice. Certainly much better than the many, many thousands I've paid in over the years without asking for anything back.

Of course we could simply ask people if they'd mind simply wrapping themselves up in cotton wool and never actually living their lives in any way. That would save the NHS and fortune.

 

Yes unfortunately such GPs do exist. The ones that think their time is too important for a small child that may simply have had too much juice but equally might be showing early signs of food poisoning or any of many potentially dangerous infections. My wife's dad met that kind of gp several times and repeatedly got dismissed with antibiotics for his sore throat. It was the dentist who raised the alarm. Too late. Wife's dad died a few weeks later from a massive tumour in his throat. Or maybe like the gp that thought it was a waste of time making a house call to my grandad. My grandad died later the same day having suffered a stroke. Yep. There are some gps who hate the fact that they get paid a mere 90 grand a year just to listen to people's pathetic little health concerns.

 

It's going to get worse.

Council's are looking at ways to generate additional income to fund budget cuts - which means charging for previously 'free' services (by 'free' I mean paid for by your Council Tax).

Some services are 'sacred' - those aimed at protecting the vulnerable - these services are shielded as much as possible from budget cuts - so any budget to pay for getting rid of garden soil will be directed towards social services.

If I was a betting man - I'd say that in 10 years time - all Council services will be privatised - the Council as such will simply be a commissioner and not a supplier. Profit will take precedence over service delivery - you can guess the rest.

 

This thread is getting far too serious!

Are they redskin builders who fight cowboy builders?

 

That's interesting! Mainly because it begs the question: why?

(Knee jerk thinking alert! )

When I had my first child, my first port of call for advice was: my mother. She advised me based on what she had learned from *her* mother coupled with her own experiences. Both of them had to work for periods of time while they reared children but then, for them, it was pre-NHS and Dr's advice was only sought in dire emergencies ... *if* you could afford it. If you couldn't afford it, you relied upon hand-me-down knowledge/the local woman who "knew a few things" (which was my paternal Grandmother for her generation).

So, my initial thoughts when I read this were, since the increase in women out at work has ballooned since the '70's, fewer and fewer children are being "brought up" by their parents.
The '70's, early '80's coined the phrase "latch key kids" for this reason. The mid to late '80's saw a rise in child minder's and the beginnings of a boom in nursery schools/places as yet more women were going out to work. So, even less 'parenting'.

By the turn of the century, it was almost expected that every woman would be out working and Government were doing what they deemed "necessary" to facilitate this by offering free nursery places, encouraging schools to operate "Breakfast Clubs" etc., so now ... even less children being "parented".

A morning radio call in show (and I'm going back 2 or 3 years) put out the question to new mothers: "Who are you more likely to turn to for advice in child rearing: mother or friend" and the majority of those who called in/emailed/text opted for friend! I found that astonishing!! But then, thinking a bit, they probably *know* their friends better than their mothers. How could their mothers help and assist them with advice when they were probably working their own socks off while they were at child minders/nursery. Where is the bonding which would make their mother their first port of call?

Even more worrying are the number of youngsters, who have no concept of life without the Internet and readily turn to it for medical direction and end up at the GP surgery convinced their offspring has a very serious condition when, in fact, it may simply be teething, diarrhoea or a normal graze.

While I do see the GP's dilemma, surely it is better to have a child brought to surgery to be checked over as opposed to: a) a child being taken to A&E for the aforementioned ailments; or b) failure to seek professional advice resulting in fatal consequences?

 

Yeah, I thought I was the pessimist around here.

Higher interest rates????, they cant get much lower, if they do we will be paying them to look after our money, and that will surely be our downfall.
Just imagine, everyone takes their money out the banks and hides it under the bed.

That bloke that runs the Bank of England needs to get real, lowering interest rates is the worst thing he could have done.
He wants us all to spend money we don't have.

Which is why we got into this mess in the first place.
I feel a Laurel and Hardy quote coming on.