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Yeah I don't think people disagree that claiming for completely unneccessary treatment isn't right but thats an issue with what the government is willing to fund rather than the NHS itself.

well as a slight aside, if you know someone who i abusing the system, by law you are culpable for not reporting them.

and it is meant to be very, very difficult to remain on the dole with recent improvements. I dot know if this has been put into effect as of yet, but since my gf and i reported someone who was abusing the system (and nothing was done), we were informed they should be caught soon anyway as the way people are investigated is changing.

I think the problem is greater than the NHS.

All cival servants seem to get away with much poorer performance than most private employees (and don't get me started on teachers Arrrgh!).

Don't get me wrong there are halfwits every where dragging down the average for everyone. Where I am they are either put in position where they are most useful or got rid of. I can see why the Gov't would want to impliment this kind of plan to increase efficiency but they just seem to generate more spinless civil servants and beauracrats.

I did see a good documentry the other day where military personnel we being employed at Head Teachers. The contrast with what had gone before was remarkable. All the office politicking was done away with, problems were identified and addressed. Management speak was banned, no more team leaders or advisers. It was really quite refreshing to see (admittedly rather than the media spun extremes that we probably assume to be the case).

I always disppear at the state of public procurement as well. £10 for a light bulb i the NHS, it was £22 at the MOD in the last couple of months.

Lindsay I was not unsimpathetic with what you were saying right up to the point where you suggested more union membership. Not more unions please!

Out of interest does anyone know of a sound medical reason for gender reassignment? Boob jobs (reductions and reconstruction anyway) I can understand but GR not so much?

Matty don't you work for the council?

notprop wrote:I think the problem is greater than the NHS.

All cival servants seem to get away with much poorer performance than most private employees (and don't get me started on teachers Arrrgh!).

Don't get me wrong there are halfwits every where dragging down the average for everyone. Where I am they are either put in position where they are most useful or got rid of. I can see why the Gov't would want to impliment this kind of plan to increase efficiency but they just seem to generate more spinless civil servants and beauracrats.

I did see a good documentry the other day where military personnel we being employed at Head Teachers. The contrast with what had gone before was remarkable. All the office politicking was done away with, problems were identified and addressed. Management speak was banned, no more team leaders or advisers. It was really quite refreshing to see (admittedly rather than the media spun extremes that we probably assume to be the case).

I always disppear at the state of public procurement as well. £10 for a light bulb i the NHS, it was £22 at the MOD in the last couple of months.

Lindsay I was not unsimpathetic with what you were saying right up to the point where you suggested more union membership. Not more unions please!

Out of interest does anyone know of a sound medical reason for gender reassignment? Boob jobs (reductions and reconstruction anyway) I can understand but GR not so much?

Matty don't you work for the council?

Couldnt agree more, did you see that Panorama I linked a few months ago? I think you will enjoy it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00s8kpv/Panorama_Can_I_Sack_Teacher/

And you mentioned work, so I feel an urge to rant.

Yeah I left the corps and joined the city council, I was working one job for them driving a recycling vehicle as I got my HGV licence when VIKING came into play for my last tour in the Gan, this is why my ire is well placed. I think that about 60% of the staff at the council are grossly incompetent, and its hard coming from an elite unit where 99.9% of people were switched on and extremely professional, to a unit where most people are lazy and incompetent.

About 20% of the staff are on long term sick, its genuinelly fething unbelievable. I think if I went into real detail you would think I was making it up.

Anyways, after working for them for about 3 weeks, the head of the open spaces dept (a former prison officer) saw my CV (I didnt even apply for this job) and phoned me to ask if I fancied working for the Parks department as well. So i said I would be happy to help. He wanted me to help them out because he said apprently they were having trouble with "youths" and seeing as I was a former RM he knew Id be just right for this type of work, so i started accompanying some of their full time employees around.

And about 50% of them are useless as well, and half of them are on the sick too.

Its truly unbelieveable. I think the issue could be fixed easily, we should stop all sick pay. Whats statutory? 50% of your wage? Give them that instead. The public sector is being bled dry by "Servants" who rape their masters. At my council you get FULL pay for 6 months, and half of the staff are dutiflly on it for 6 months of the year. Lets scrap it.

Heres my beef, as I said before, Im a man of principle, most people wont vote for anything unless it benefits them, but I will. Ive got a backbone.

I AM a public servant and heres what I want, a lower wage cap, no sick pay, and the unions grinding beneath Camerons heels. The union at my work is ensuring that the monkeys do nothing. They cannot sack the lazy and the incompetent, so they hand one to me and say "keep him out of trouble" so he does no work at all, and they do this because they know I will carry him. All the good guys at my work are being given monkeys to carry, because they know we can handle it. Sack the fethers!

Unions may have served a purpose once, indeed, they were necessary once upon a time, but now they have been perverted, they are now there to stop the incompetent from being sacked, and this hugely affects the hard working 25% morale. Thats why im an anti union tory.

Firemen are overpaid ditch diggers, coppers are useless, and the public sector is being raped by most of the people that work for it, If I was Maggie Thatcher I would have gone a few steps further. The public sector needs treating like the private sector.

In my book, the working man votes conservative. The man who is willing to work hard to better himself. The sick lame and lazy vote Labour and cry about the unions when they get asked to do some fething work for a change.

mattyrm wrote:Im saying that you should not be able to "play" the system.

Then, pardon my bluntness, shouldn't you have said that in the first place...?

Saying you never take from the system has multiple interpretations...

Of course I will pardon your bluntness love, I apologise for not making things more clear.

Mattyrm I agree with you that we need to treat public services like they were in the private sector. A simple change of attitude will do more than all of the reforms.

The structure of most of our services are ok- the problem is the workers lack drive. I'm not just talking about the everyday workers a lot of the people in charge of running services just don't care that much. I know NHS workers who have tried to make a difference and their suggstions are just ignored, when out of everyone they have a good idea of what the problem is seeing as they work in the middle of it.

mattyrm wrote:
If someone has to get his cock made bigger on the NHS.

Its not that hard to grasp is it?

.. Well in this situation I think there's a demonstrable... oh.. I get you.

And reds comment was funny, but, how far off the mark is it? If I see a guy in the Daily Mail in a few weeks time who gets state funded GW battleforces due to depression Ill know who it is!

.. I for one cannot wait to see how they'll blame this one on the muslims ! Think what it'll do to the houseing market !

... we do call it plsatic crack after all eh ?

I'll concoct some sort of sob story : It started off in the usual way, just for kicks with the odd blister pack with friends or a skeleton horde. Then it was tactical squads, battleforces and then before I knew it I was handing over hundreds of pounds for "resin" and spending my time scouring the web for cheaper online suppliers desperate for more, knowing that just one more unit and everything would be fine.

reds8n wrote:

mattyrm wrote:
If someone has to get his cock made bigger on the NHS.

Its not that hard to grasp is it?

.. Well in this situation I think there's a demonstrable... oh.. I get you.

Chortle!

notprop wrote:I think the problem is greater than the NHS.

All cival servants seem to get away with much poorer performance than most private employees (and don't get me started on teachers Arrrgh!).

Don't get me wrong there are halfwits every where dragging down the average for everyone. Where I am they are either put in position where they are most useful or got rid of. I can see why the Gov't would want to impliment this kind of plan to increase efficiency but they just seem to generate more spinless civil servants and beauracrats.

I did see a good documentry the other day where military personnel we being employed at Head Teachers. The contrast with what had gone before was remarkable. All the office politicking was done away with, problems were identified and addressed. Management speak was banned, no more team leaders or advisers. It was really quite refreshing to see (admittedly rather than the media spun extremes that we probably assume to be the case).

You do realize that military personnel are government employees/AKA civil servants, right? It's not whether you're part of a private or public organization. It's about the standards and practices of that organization.

The idea that private industry is more efficient and effective than public/governmental workers is simply false. As evidenced by the US spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the UK does.

mattyrm wrote:Im not saying everyone should be as proud as me and never go to an NHS dentist, live in a council house, get working tax credits or child benefit or any other goddamn state assisted programme.

You seem to be avoiding the issue that your time in the armed forces also constituted a state-funded activity. And arguably, both the government and the private healthcare companies abused your goodwill and patriotism to turn your aftercare into a way of funding more sports cars for BUPA (or whomever)'s shareholders and execs.

Did you do any arms promotion work in your time in uniform? The arms trade receives a state handout of £10K-15K per year per employee, in the form of direct subsidies, free underwriting on exports, and free labour from forces personnel promoting British products at arms fairs.

mattyrm wrote: I say we ban, pschological treatments unless you are sectioned.

That's basically how the US system works: if someone has a low income, wait until their condition becomes very serious before Medicare will treat it.

As a result, minor complaints go untreated and become more serious, more expensive complaints. This is a big part of why the US government proportionately spends more on health care than the NHS does. You want to save a penny of prevention then spend a pound on cure?

And that's not taking into account the other costs incurred when you take people with mental health problems and do absolutely nothing to help them until they become a demonstrable threat to themselves and others. Take away the support given to people who have not yet become violently unstable or started stealing to fund drug habits and watch what happens to the violent crime rate - and the accompanying change in enforcement costs.

This is why the 'small state' libertarian philosophy is inherently flawed; remove the state's obligations to do anything other than maintain law and order, and the additional strain on maintaining law and order skyrockets.

And your impression of gender dysphoric people as simply deciding that they want a winkie or boobies is completely contradictory to the medical consensus on the issue.

mattyrm wrote:Im saying that our system is being systematically abused on a large scale. And it needs putting right. We need to make it harder to get benefits, much harder, because everyone knows someone who is milking the system.

I see you complaining a lot about the behaviour of people at the bottom of an economy with far more people seeking work than there are vacancies, yet you've not said anything about very wealthy people who avoid paying tax and receive state handouts for their failed businesses and avoid being drawn into answering points about the role such individuals play in depleting the NHS budget. Restricting your attacks only to the poor and mentally ill does not give you the appearance of seeking a more just system.

mattyrm wrote: Im not saying everyone should be as proud as me and never go to an NHS dentist, live in a council house, get working tax credits or child benefit or any other goddamn state assisted programme.

...but you do realize that you are likely to need at least some governmental services at some point, right? In the US young healthy guys with attitudes very much like yours frequently don't bother with health insurance, and complain about having to pay for services for other people. It's the same lack of perspective. It's like if one of the guys in your squad got shot, and you were one of the guys carrying the stretcher, and you complained about the fact that he was lying down and you were carrying him! At some point, it's practically guaranteed, you WILL be sick and need care. Don't bitch at the guy who ate a bullet just because you haven't been hit yet. You'll be happy you're part of the system if you catch a bullet (metaphorically, of course; literally I mean: get badly sick or injured) later, and someone is there to carry you in the stretcher.

mattyrm wrote: Im saying that our system is being systematically abused on a large scale. And it needs putting right. We need to make it harder to get benefits, much harder, because everyone knows someone who is milking the system.

I can totally get behind you here. The abuses you describe at the council are pretty egregious and ridiculous, and more reform is clearly needed.

A lot of people would be surprised at the amount of slackness, stupid bureaucracy and waste in big companies.

There is no magic spell of privatisation or evil curse of public-isation. Everything is done by people working within systems. Good people tend to create good systems, which in turn select and train more good people. The opposite is also true.

Lol. Seem to be ignoring the fact? Its such a bad point I didnt even think about it, Im not ignoring it. I seem to recall someone once using the same argument when I said im against socialism.

State funded activity? Really? Maggie Thatcher was paid by the taxpayers as well, is she a socialist?

We need a military, we have a long proud military history and we will always have one, if we didnt have the Royal Marines, we would be hiring a company like Blackwater and I would have joined them instead. Simples.

Seriously, thats not a sensible point.

The rest of it is however, and while i tend to act rash, I am only half serious, while I am of course in favour of sweeping NHS reform, Im not actually unaware that mental health issues are not a trivial thing, or that people with gender issues dont deserve some measure of repect and assistance.

Im in the middle of a wow raid so we can talk later.

Kilkrazy wrote:A lot of people would be surprised at the amount of slackness, stupid bureaucracy and waste in big companies.

I hope I have made it abundantly clear in certain other threads that I am not one of those people

mattyrm wrote:State funded activity? Really? Maggie Thatcher was paid by the taxpayers as well, is she a socialist?

Mannahnin wrote:

notprop wrote:I think the problem is greater than the NHS.

All cival servants seem to get away with much poorer performance than most private employees (and don't get me started on teachers Arrrgh!).

Don't get me wrong there are halfwits every where dragging down the average for everyone. Where I am they are either put in position where they are most useful or got rid of. I can see why the Gov't would want to impliment this kind of plan to increase efficiency but they just seem to generate more spinless civil servants and beauracrats.

I did see a good documentry the other day where military personnel we being employed at Head Teachers. The contrast with what had gone before was remarkable. All the office politicking was done away with, problems were identified and addressed. Management speak was banned, no more team leaders or advisers. It was really quite refreshing to see (admittedly rather than the media spun extremes that we probably assume to be the case).

You do realize that military personnel are government employees/AKA civil servants, right? It's not whether you're part of a private or public organization. It's about the standards and practices of that organization.

The idea that private industry is more efficient and effective than public/governmental workers is simply false. As evidenced by the US spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the UK does.

Yeah thanks for the diamond bullet to the brainbox. The military has resposibilty and duties that mean that any slacking is dealt with there and then, this is not the case in the civil service.

The fact is that if you are slacking in a private company and are caught you will be sacked, in the public services this will almost defintely not be the case. Re training more likely. For example of the 3000+ teacher charged with incompetance over the last 5 years only approx 200 were sacked or paid off. This seem very low, especially when I here exactly how many teachers perform from Mrs notprop who works at the local senior school.

The US healthcare system is only evidence of the stagnet mess that is US politics and the fact that big business er I mean the two presiding parties have some how managed to convince the majority of voters that giving a toss about one another is a bad thing. The fact that the US is bent over and still gets a poor service is neither here nor there.

While I agree with Matty on more than a few things, I do differ in that I am quite happy to pay more into the system than I use (I even have private medical ins.) but refuse to accept the lack of resposibility that is indemic in the civil services.

notprop wrote:The fact is that if you are slacking in a private company and are caught you will be sacked

This is SO not true, as I would know from personal experience.

notprop wrote:[The fact is that if you are slacking in a private company and are caught you will be sacked, in the public services this will almost defintely not be the case.

Have you never worked for a private company? I have. I've fired people. And I know how many hoops we jumped through, and how many notices we gave, and how many warnings, and Action Plans. The idea that "private sector = more efficient" is a myth.

mattyrm wrote:Ive been furious with how bad our NHS has been performing over the years, so ive started reading up on the issue, and one thing that confuses me is the amount of opposition to the idea of reforms. More information on reforms can be read here.

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Aboutus/Features/DH_122686

The Nurses just passed a vote of no confidence in Andrew Lansley, and I am left wondering whats next in the chain. Why do you think the reforms are being so heavily resisted?

Im not happy with how the system is at all, it makes me furious. The average NHS worker has 4 times more time off sick than other areas of the public sector, foreign men have had gender reassignment done, tatoos are being removed, boob jobs for dole scum.. the fething works. I dont like the current system at all, so much so that Im starting to wish we had a system more like in the US.

Where do you see the NHS in five years time? Are we REALLY on a path to privatised medicine? Or is this just media scaremongering?

Is the hate speech really necessary?

Yes, because it's on the NHS, so the tax-payer who has been living here their whole life and working their knuckles to the bone is now rewarded by paying for some randomer from XYZistan who's got the bare minimum to qualify for NHS treatment to have ridiculous operations. Obviously Britains have it as well, but at least they partially paid for it through taxes.

mattyrm wrote:Yeah I think Melissa, Red et al are missing the point of what I am trying to say. Obviously if you are born and raised in any civilised country then something from "the system" has benefitted you. Im not saying never use anything ever, thats ridiclous. Im saying that you should not be able to "play" the system. And our system is far too easy to abuse, abuse for wellfare, council houses, job seekers, NHS cosmetics, etc etc ad nausium.

If someone has worked for 20 years and he gets made redundant, then of course he should be allowed job seekers allowance, but he shouldnt be allowed to get his cock made bigger on the NHS.

Its not that hard to grasp is it?

Im not saying everyone should be as proud as me and never go to an NHS dentist, live in a council house, get working tax credits or child benefit or any other goddamn state assisted programme.

Im saying that our system is being systematically abused on a large scale. And it needs putting right. We need to make it harder to get benefits, much harder, because everyone knows someone who is milking the system.

gak, i personally know about 6 people who do it, its a big joke in the pub to have a mate who has been on the dole for 6 years. But not to bad tempered Matty it isnt.

But thats kinda OT, lets just stick to the NHS.

I say we ban, pschological treatments unless you are sectioned. That will put a stop to all the fake depression and all the sex changes and boob jobs. If you have to spend 90 days in a nuthouse, i think the boob job requests will go through the floor!

And reds comment was funny, but, how far off the mark is it? If I see a guy in the Daily Mail in a few weeks time who gets state funded GW battleforces due to depression Ill know who it is!

Canada has public healthcare as well but it's partially or doesn't cover things like prescription drugs, dentistry and optometry. Also the UK doesn't spend as much on healthcare as much as many other "westernized"

countries (mind you I'm shocked on how much is spent in the US compared to other countries).

mattyrm wrote:Lol. Seem to be ignoring the fact? Its such a bad point I didnt even think about it, Im not ignoring it. I seem to recall someone once using the same argument when I said im against socialism.

State funded activity? Really? Maggie Thatcher was paid by the taxpayers as well, is she a socialist?

We need a military, we have a long proud military history and we will always have one, if we didnt have the Royal Marines, we would be hiring a company like Blackwater and I would have joined them instead. Simples.

Seriously, thats not a sensible point.

The rest of it is however, and while i tend to act rash, I am only half serious, while I am of course in favour of sweeping NHS reform, Im not actually unaware that mental health issues are not a trivial thing, or that people with gender issues dont deserve some measure of repect and assistance.

Im in the middle of a wow raid so we can talk later.

Nobody's calling you a socialist for working for the state. But it is being noted that you are perfectly happy to earn a wage other people are forced to pay.

And whilst Maggie was definitely not a socialist in the traditional meaning of the word to refer to an egalitarian tradition, she was certainly prepared to massively extend the state in an attempt to emulate Pinochet's feats in making the rich richer, virtually militarising police with massively extended powers that had nothing to do with law and order and everything to do with violating civil liberties.

Mannahnin wrote:

notprop wrote:[The fact is that if you are slacking in a private company and are caught you will be sacked, in the public services this will almost defintely not be the case.

Have you never worked for a private company? I have. I've fired people. And I know how many hoops we jumped through, and how many notices we gave, and how many warnings, and Action Plans. The idea that "private sector = more efficient" is a myth.

It's strange how the free marketeers in this thread aren't saying anything about the billions being thrown at failed private sector banks who managed to lead the charge in smashing up the world economy, isn't it?

Requia wrote:

mattyrm wrote:Im not happy with how the system is at all, it makes me furious. The average NHS worker has 4 times more time off sick than other areas of the public sector, foreign men have had gender reassignment done, tatoos are being removed, boob jobs for dole scum.. the fething works. I dont like the current system at all, so much so that Im starting to wish we had a system more like in the US.

Is (transphobic) hate speech really necessary?

Avatar 720 wrote:Yes, because it's on the NHS, so the tax-payer who has been living here their whole life and working their knuckles to the bone is now rewarded by paying for some randomer from XYZistan who's got the bare minimum to qualify for NHS treatment to have ridiculous operations. Obviously Britains have it as well, but at least they partially paid for it through taxes.

GRS is not a 'ridiculous operation'. Furthermore, the fact that a transgender person whose parents didn't have the good sense to breed within British jurisdiction might have been able to qualify for a couple of grand's worth of treatment* in no way overrides the Dakka-wide rule against hate speech.

Feel free to ask the mods to make an exception permitting users to post hateful comments about minorities so long as the targets are very poor transfolk for whom English is a foreign language, but you're unlikely to meet much success on that count.

And I'll reiterate that companies supplying the NHS can make triple figure profits on their contracts (and these unsourced transgender immagrunts might have a bit more funding for public healthcare in their countries if the 'proud military history' of the UK didn't have so much bandit imperialism stealing wealth from less developed countries and creating template authoritarian states).

If anything, blaming poor people using the NHS for NHS budget problems makes the NHS budget problems worse by helping the government misdirect attention away from the massive amounts of money being taken out of the NHS by PFI.

In 2009, 143 people had gender reassignment surgery (GRS) on the NHS at an average cost of £10,000 each. (I had no idea it was so cheap!)

I don't know how many were foreigners. According to the Citizen's Advice Bureau it would have been none since GRS isn't emergency treatment.

I appreciate that mattyrm would rather the figure had been zero, however it is incorrect to suggest that GRS on foreigners or natives is an important drain on NHS resources. The NHS budget for 2009 was £107 billion.

Kingston Hospital's car parking fees alone would cover half the bill for GRS.

Let's look at some real issues.

Yeah I suppose its not that huge a cost issue, it still shouldn't be happening though.

Here's a real issue then, degenerates suing the NHS. That must cost us billions right?

How about we make patients sign a waiver so they can't sue what is effectively just the tax payer? And some other system can be put in place to punish slovenly service on the NHS part, but doesn't reward people with cold hard cash.

If you want the right to line your pockets after unsatisfactory service, go pay for BUPA.

Kilkrazy wrote:In 2009, 143 people had gender reassignment surgery (GRS) on the NHS at an average cost of £10,000 each. (I had no idea it was so cheap!) ...Kingston Hospital's car parking fees alone would cover half the bill for GRS.

Is £10,000 the cost for the actual pre-op/surgery/aftercare (assessment time, surgeon time, theatre time, admin costs, clinic costs, etc), or is that the out of pocket cost for the person undergoing GRS?

It seems that £10,000 is the average paid by the NHS for people to have gender reassignment surgery in private clinics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6806530.ece

An account here (from year 2000) says the cost done by a surgeon within the NHS was a bit under £5,000, compared to a totally private cost of £9,000. The difference is explained by the higher cost of rooms in private hospitals.

http://tgmeds.org.uk/downs/grsterry.pdf

Mannahnin wrote:

notprop wrote:[The fact is that if you are slacking in a private company and are caught you will be sacked, in the public services this will almost defintely not be the case.

Have you never worked for a private company? I have. I've fired people. And I know how many hoops we jumped through, and how many notices we gave, and how many warnings, and Action Plans. The idea that "private sector = more efficient" is a myth.

Really? I've done it a few times and not found it that difficult to get the desired result. Are you sure you tried hard enough? You were being nice and fair weren't you?

It sound to me that you are following the Civil Service route that we have here. Personally I don't have unionised staff so don't have my hands tied when dealing with people, of course this is extremely rare as we tend to employ people that want to get on (a waste of a degree otherwise isn't it). All the labour I use is subcontracted, if they don't do the work to programme or to standard then they meet the cost of the remedy. I hardly have to to do this as again, people want to get on and build relationships for more work.

The system works well for the construction/services industries. This is the same sort of system that the Gov't has tried to implement with privatised element of the NHS, the problem being that they are not procured correctly, managed on a local level correctly or punished for failings. This seems to be common across many Civil departments ergo the £10/£22 light bulbs.

Now I am not suggesting that all private companies are efficient as you assume. But if a private company can provide a service and produce a surplus at the end then there is no reason that a Gov't department can not do the same (or at least attempt to). In reality all people really want to see is an end to the waste and profligacy that currently exists within the system.

Anyway, If you are not efficient then this must surely show in your results, why is your boss letting you get away with this Mannahnin?

Construction is an industry where effort and output are relatively easy to measure. An easy example -- you can count the number of bricks laid per hour. If the lines are level and the mortar is good, the job's done well.

Measuring productivity like this is harder to do in many office type jobs.

lindsay40k wrote:It's strange how the free marketeers in this thread aren't saying anything about the billions being thrown at failed private sector banks who managed to lead the charge in smashing up the world economy, isn't it?

This has no relation to the topic at hand, so why would anyone bring it up? Besides, throwing billions of dollars at failing banks has absolutely no place to a free market.

How about the trillions that have been thrown at failed public sector banks who created the economic "smash up"?

I would respectfully disagree KK, but then I'm just a simple Quantity Surveyor.

If you are counting bricks or in the case of the NHS equivelent counting immunisation injections administered/band aids applied then you are looking at it far too closely (we can leave micro management to GW I think).

For example:

Is the hospital ward clean or unclean?

If not the contractor with the responsibility for this should be in the first instance given a clear-up/non-compliance notice (making it nice and legal). The next is to charge the offending company for time lost and appointments cancelled (prehaps the cost of sending the affected patients to private care?). Dealt with like this contractors soon start to adopt professional attitudes to their duties, problems will be identified before they affect patient care, ultimately a partnering attutude will be developed between Hospital and contractors. Wastage and unforseen costs will be minimised.

These issues need to be identified and put into place when the contracts are procured. This does not seem to be the case. If I can procure multiple millions of pounds worth work designing and buiding hospitals with no risk to the NHS (for I have in the past) why can they not procure someone to clean or maintain them - the answer is Gov't procurement is for the most part a joke.

All of this does put the onus on good management. These managers are the Nurses/Doctors/Teachers/whomever accepting the responsibility and working towards the goals fo providing better services.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

biccat wrote:

lindsay40k wrote:It's strange how the free marketeers in this thread aren't saying anything about the billions being thrown at failed private sector banks who managed to lead the charge in smashing up the world economy, isn't it?

This has no relation to the topic at hand, so why would anyone bring it up? Besides, throwing billions of dollars at failing banks has absolutely no place to a free market.

How about the trillions that have been thrown at failed public sector banks who created the economic "smash up"?

I think that there might be some confusion between the UK meaning of Public/private and the US.

Uk public = Gov't

Unless that is a clever jole on the take over of private banks by Gov'ts. In which case well done.