...how much does the actual Director make?
If you haven't had to make use of the NHS recently, you're lucky. Over the past three years, I have have been forced to wait for a minimum of three months for the majority of appointments with consultants or specialist clinics - in one instance, half a year, and then I only got an appointment because my wife went to the hospital department on a bank holiday, grabbed someone in a white coat, waited while they tracked down the letter sent to them by a doctor in that very hospital 26 weeks earlier, and got me an appointment for later that same week. If she hadn't done that, I'd probably still be waiting to hear from them. One member of my family was given a follow-up appointment to get the results of a number of tests relating to a debilitating, long-term condition six months in the future: it's due to happen next month, but he phoned his GP and got them to release the test results "early" (i.e. after a mere four months). Another family member is also booked in for an appointment at a specialist clinic next month - after a mere four month delay.
None of us has a life-threatening condition (as far as we know), but we are all suffering from (unrelated) afflictions which are definitely affecting the quality of our lives. We have all scoured the internet for advice - and spent a small fortune following it - but nothing has really helped. None of us is expecting definitive answers or miracle cures, and we understand that we don't have cancer or broken limbs or cystic fibrosis. I took a friend who was in extreme pain to the local A&E last year, only for him to be left writhing in appalling agony in reception for nearly an hour while a porky, incomprehensible jobsworth sat sullenly behind his glass barrier at the counter, refusing to help, and a number of remarkably undistressed-looking people (who probably couldn't be arsed to wait for a GP appointment) were seen to. With that experience in mind, and having heard a number of horror stories from sensible, truthful, articulate friends and relatives who are receiving shockingly shoddy treatment despite being seriously ill - well, I'm unconvinced that the old claim that the NHS might be rubbish at treating minor complaints, but it's brilliant in an emergency, is no longer true (if it ever was).
Given all of the above, and given the standard line that the NHS provides a poor service because it is "underfunded", just exactly why is the Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust offering some utter waste of space almost £60,000 of our money to "deliver our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy 2015-2019"? What about delivering some first class fucking medical care instead, because, you know, that's sort of the whole point of the organisation?
My sympathy to your relatives (and you, of course). I am currently in the thick of this myself, with a close family member of extreme age who is being treated worse than I could have imagined possible by a succession of GPs and A&E departments, none of which seem to wish to take responsibility for a difficult case.
ReplyDeleteAs for the diversity zombie, I have a friend who has recently retired from the Care Quality Commission with whom I was discussing a similar appointment. In this case it was another NHS area and the pay was similarly outrageous.
Apparently the woman in question was a well known trouble maker who had simply elbowed her way through the NHS structure and this sinecure was her 'reward'.
If you consider the number of these vampires fastened to the neck of the the NHS, it isn't hard to see (combined with Bliar's Las Vegas style 'reforms' of GPs' contracts) how we can be in such a mess.
The NHS is going to be the toughest nut of all for realists to crack, so imbued is it with the near-religious worship pumped out by the BBC and others.
I'll never forget a (now retired) teacher friend of mine explaining the profusion of ridiculous non-jobs to me about 15 years ago when I asked why he'd got himself involved in some ridiculous non-academic project at his school: "The only way to get ahead in teaching these days is to stop doing any actual teaching." I once volunteered for a similarly silly project at the BBC, and my stalled career was instantly back on track!
DeleteIt's one of those odd but familiar situations - everyone (apart from a tiny handful of deranged cultural Marxists) knows this sort of thing is bullshit, and yet it continues. It's the same as local councils banning any reference to Christmas or judges refusing to deport foreign criminals because of their inhuman rights. Vampires is a good word for them - but where are the Professor Van Helsings who should be driving stakes through the fuckers' hearts while the rest of us celebrate? Or does Britain inevitably continue to morph into Salem's Lot?
The BBC's reporting of the Red Cross nonsense re the NHS yesterday was typically hysterical. They've gone from refusing to voice any criticism of this failing organisation to blaming its failures on - wait for it - underfunding! Because, you see, the solution to any public sector problem is to throw more of our money at it. Pass the sickbag! (Only there aren't any, because they spent the money on hiring an utterly vital Assistant Director of Equality and Diversity.)
He isn't everyone's cup of tea, but Nigel Farage has a distinct air of Van Helsing about him. He answers questions with the directness I last saw from that other demon, Enoch Powell, and I doubt he would hesitate to be honest about the NHS, rather than deliver the usual coached prevarications.
DeleteAs for Salem's Lot, I'm starting to think more of I Am Legend. We might conceivably all be just doomed...
Farage is too jolly and bumptious to play Van Helsing, I think. Enoch Powell? Now you're talking!
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