Yeah, but, commemorative postage stamps...

We haven't left yet.

Don’t blame racist and xenophobic brexiteers. Blame the Tory party. I live in a 20k population town and in a 7 mile radius the tories have closed 5 hospitals in the past 4 years so no wonder A&Es are at breaking point. The same people who voted Tory (so 99% of the sin bin) will be the at the top of queue to complain about the NHS. (Pro tip - if you voted Tory you have no right to complain)

Regards

King James

Not often I agree with LJ, but he is bang on

Absolutely correct - the NHS is being systematically defunded, in preparation for privatisation; soon it will be in the hands of Branson and various other private providers, shortly thereafter to be funded by insurance, US style.

Meanwhile, the woman hotly tipped to become the new Health Secretary - Ann Milton - appears to have all the right qualifications; but would you adam and eve it, her husband just happens to be a Director of Virgin Care, who are hoovering up great swathes of the NHS, and suing when they don't get their way...

Talk about all having their snouts in the same trough.
Grabbing self serving b'stards, or corporate puppets, the lot of them and many of the Labour & SNP mob fall into the same category.

Just about managing (to breathe) should be the Tory mantra and they will probably start charging for fresh air at some point.

During a discussion I had in which the group was evenly split 50/50 with those who voted leave and those who voted remain, we only had one outstanding question... At what point will the riots start?

My daughter had a major operation before xmas. The skill & dedication of the staff is humbling, but the delays in responding to the unplanned & being asked to vacate her bed for the next patient & wait in the family room for medication was shocking. I have no doubt now that it is a sinister, ideologically driven, deliberate policy of destroying all public services so they can be handed to their friends.

All major parties should shoulder the blame for the state of the nhs. Unless things change dramatically the nhs will stagger on steadily decreasing in efficiency. If we increased the funding on a massive scale it’s highly unlikely things would change.
Mainly because the nhs is dogged by restrictive practices. Which the Labour Party are more than happy to accommodate. If you recall giving the general practitioners a massive pay rise and agreeing to the scrapping of Saturday working. It’s no wonder casualty departments are packed at weekends. The labour parties criticism of the tories conveniently forgets the scandal of the Mid Staffordshire hospital Scandal, patients dying from lack of care, nurses falsifying records etc etc.
To make matters worse due to an influx of people from Europe we have seen a huge increase in patient numbers. None of these have payed much into the system but are receiving the full benefits.

Are you saying that the figures showing that immigrants from Eastern Europe are net contributors to the economy are wrong ?
It would be more accurate to say that any increases in NHS spending have not kept up with the growing population, which is nothing like the picture that you are trying to paint.
The % increases in spending dont take into account any increase in population and again, if you believe our unemployment figures, at the lowest for decades, then someones sums dont add up, unless all of the "new" employment is on minimum wage or zero hours contracts

What the hell has that got to do with the demand immigrants place on the NHS? Does their highly debatable net contribution increase the number of beds to account for their numbers? Oh they might pay in, but unless the NHS is operationally able to immediately absorb the impact their numbers bring, it's largely irrelevant.



As for non-EU immigrants, that's another story on a different scale entirely - a negative impact of [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/european-immigrants-contribute-5bn-to-uk-economy-but-non-eu-migrants-cost-118bn-9840170.html£118 billion 1995-2011[/url as even the Indy acknowledges.

Fact is, every government has closed facilities and reduced the number of beds due to the NHS being an massively unwieldy beast. Labour reduced beds by around 52k during their last tenure. Since the 2010 GE beds have dropped by around 14k.


And how is spending supposed to keep up if you have no idea how how much your population might increase by in any given year?

NHS spending has risen and risen year on year to try and keep pace with a growing and aging population, and the increasing costs of healthcare and wages. That, and that closure of too many facilities alongside institutionalised legacy inefficiencies have taken their toll.

Fact is, we have an increasingly aging population together with population growth boosted by immigration. The UK population grew by 513,000 in 2016, of which 335,000 was net migration - so don't try to tell me immigration isn't a factor in the NHS overload (and housing, and other public services). It absolutely is, and 20 years of the idiot liberal left vilifying anyone who dare say otherwise was a big factor in Brexit, and the rise of UKIP and 'populist' tendencies.

I am friends with 2 x midwives, a hospital theatre manager and a couple of nurses - and in private all of them bemoan the impact and strain immigration places on their services (the midwives in particular!). But if they opened their mouths in public they'd be sacked. The liberals in charge don't stand for that sort of thing.




What's that you say? The bottom end of the jobs market is trashed? Low cost labour is being taken advantage of? Wonder what might have influenced that...