The Ministry of Justice has decided to include Wales in a new bill to introduce specific offences relating to mental and physical abuse in hospitals.  The Welsh government said they didn’t need the law but some Liebour MPs and a peer complained and the MoJ has changed its mind.
I’ve spent a lot more than average […]

Researchers at Cardiff University reckon they can “cure” osteoarthritis using stem cells.
I have quite bad osteoarthritis in both my knees.  On my left knee, parts of the joint have no cartilage at all and the rest is poor quality, rough cartilage.  On my right knee, it’s poor quality, rough cartilage.  They both make some very […]

English lose out in funding of health
Tom Taylor, chief executive of the Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust, has confirmed what the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament has been saying for the last couple of years: Treating Welsh patients in Shropshire hospitals is costing millions of pounds that could be spent […]

The following letter has been sent to the press in the West Midlands and Shropshire MPs:
Tom Taylor, Chief Executive of the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust, has confirmed what the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament has been saying for the last couple of years – that treating Welsh patients in Shropshire […]

The following article appears in tonight’s Shropshire Star:

Concern grows on ‘health apartheid’
A member of a Shropshire political group has criticised the “health apartheid” of the NHS, which he claims is responsible for county patients receiving poorer services that those in Scotland and Wales.
Stuart Parr, of the Shropshire branch of the Campaign for an English Parliament, […]

On Monday I pointed out two examples of NHS discrimination in England.
The third example of NHS discrimination this week was announced today - the price of a prescription in England will rise to £7.10 per item.
Meanwhile, in Scotland prescription charges are capped at £5 with 93% being dispensed free of charge.  In Wales, all prescriptions […]

Two examples of NHS discrimination today …
Discrimination #1
The Welsh Assembly today announced that it is abolishing parking charges in Welsh hospitals.
In Scotland, parking charges in hospitals are capped to £3 per day in the 6% of hospitals that charge for parking and in Northern Ireland only 20% of hospitals charge for parking compared to 92% […]

No Mandate Brown has announced that the (English) NHS will start offering health screening for heart disease, strokes and kidney disease as well as increasing the screening for some types of cancer.
Health screening is good but it’s still wrong the Gordon Brown is interfering in the English NHS.  He has no say over the NHS […]

Call Me Dave Camoron has declared the Conswervatives “the party of the NHS” and pledged to fine cash-strapped hospitals for every infection case they have.
Genius.
The rise in “superbugs” in hospitals is down to a change in the way wards are run and cuts in cleaning and maintenance budgets because of the woeful underfunding of the […]

Read this then read the letter I just sent to my turncoat Liebour MP.
Dear David,
Your Prime Minister has somehow, against all the odds, managed to make me even more annoyed today than he has since he was appointed as your leader.
I was pretty incensed when he announced that his priorities as Prime Minister would be the […]

Transport Ministers have approved funding of Federal Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system from the general EU budget.
The £2.4bn cost (more like £3bn once fraud and theft has been taken into account) will be met from “spare” money.  Why are we throwing billions at Federal Europe if they don’t need it all?  Why don’t they give […]

A Scottish woman who doctors said was 30lbs overweight has travelled to Malta for two hip replacements at a cost of £7,000 each because the Scottish NHS refused to even put her on the waiting list.
I guess I must be lucky (if you look at it that way) in that I’ve never been turned down for […]

The NHS has found something new to spend our money on.  Not something frivilous or wasteful like cancer treatments, but hymen repair jobs for muslim women.
I kid you not.  Muslim women can get a pretend virginity for their husbands free of charge on the NHS.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) refuses lots of medical […]

The first ever guest post on Wonko’s World courtesy of my good lady wife.  I’ll let her introduce herself …
My name is Lesley and I’m 32 years old with four children.  I am married to Wonko and am aka “Wonkoswife”.  You may not believe this but I am not really interested in politics and never have […]

… Scots.
The Scottish government is abolishing prescription charges in Scotland for all Scots.  At the moment, 96% of all prescriptions are dispensed free of charge.
Abolishing prescription charges north of the border is going to cost the English taxpayer another £70m.
In April this year, the Welsh government abolished all prescription charges in Wales on the same […]

… the one-eyed man is King …

Thanks to Scaffold from Cross of St George for animating by slides.
Technorati Tags: ARMD, Blindness, NHS, Discrimination

Lord Darzi, appointed by No Mandate Brown to “reform” the English NHS, is aiming to get GP’s to see their patients out of hours.
GP’s used to run out-of-hours surgeries but the British government gave them new contracts that allowed them to pass their obligations on to NHS Direct with a hefty pay rise to keep them voting […]

English nurses have reluctantly accepted a revised pay deal that is inferior to that given to Scottish and Welsh nurses.
The original 2.5% pay increase was given to Scottish nurses in a single increase but nurses in England were expected to accept the increase in stages amounting to only a 1.9% net increase.
A revised deal has […]

A High Court review of NICE’s decision not to allow English alzheimers patients to have the drug Aricept on the NHS has failed.
NICE is the British government body that decides which medical treatments English people can have on the NHS.  The name - National Institute for Clinical Excellence - is a sick joke.  It is […]

Edwina Hart, the Health Minister, recently announced that nurses should be made a 2.5% pay increase.
Nurses in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been given their full 2.5% pay increase in one go but nurses in England are to be given theirs staged throughout the year amounting to a net increase of only 1.9%.
They all […]

The Financial Times reports that No Mandate Brown left a little present for the English before he left the Treasury - a £2bn cut in funding for the English NHS.
It’s not the fact that he has no mandate on health with it being devolved in his own constituency, it’s not that he kept it quiet […]

A new drug for Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration is available free of charge on the NHS.  In Scotland.
Wet ARMD is the most common cause of blindness in over-60’s and is caused by abnormal growth of blood vesels in the eye.  Wet ARMD is less common than Dry ARMD but vision degenerates far more rapidly in […]

English children who have been trialling a sickle cell anemia drug may end up having to return to painful injections because English Primary Care Trusts (PCT’s) don’t want to pay for it.
Treatment for sickle cell anemia in children normally consists of injections into the stomach administered for 8-12 hours a day for up to 5 days a […]

John Prescott has been admitted to hospital for … a chest infection.
Yep, a chest infection.  His condition isn’t thought to be life threatening but he was taken into hospital after feeling a bit poorly.
I’ve had chest infections for years.  I get them every time I get a cold.  I once had a chest infection so bad that […]

Smokers will be able to get a daily pill for free on the NHS that will help them give up smoking.
The pill will cost the NHS £1.95 per day and works by stimulating the brain in the same way that nicotine does, thus reducing the craving.  The pill has been approved by NICE who said […]

Patientline, the rip-off provider of over-priced TV and phone services in hospitals, has a new scam - charging for headphones.
TVs have been taken off wards, the old piped radio system has been turned off and payphones have been taken away forcing patients to pay stupid amounts of money to watch TV, listen to the radio […]

The BBC are confusing England and Britain again.  In this story about the poor availability of cancer drugs they keep referring to the UK when they actually mean England.
England doesn’t have access to the best cancer drugs because they’re so expensive.  They are, however, quite often available in the rest of the UK at the […]

A Shropshire pensioner who has been paying £3,000 per month for life saving cancer treatment that is free of charge on the NHS in Scotland will now receive his treatment free of charge from his Primary Care Trust (PCT).
John Green from Bridgnorth has been paying for Sorafenib Nexaval out of his own pocket because the National […]

I’m sure I’ve ranted before about junkies getting preferential treatment in chemists when they’re going for their methedone - the pharmacists drop everything, actually stop serving people, to give them their medication.
Today I’ve seen the best one of all - so good, in fact, that I couldn’t help saying something.
Two young lads walked in, laughing […]

A Shropshire man - John Green of Bridgnorth, Shropshire - has been refused the kidney cancer drug Sorafenib Nexaval on the NHS.
The drug is freely available in Scotland thanks to the £11.3bn of English taxes given to Scotland under the discredited Barnett Formula by Chancellor Gordon Brown.
Mr Green is currently funding the £3,000 per month […]

The Healthcare Commission is calling for hospitals to monitor the ethnicity of patients because their research has shown that black and asians are more likely to be admitted to a mental hospital.
There doesn’t appear to be any suggestion that this is because of institutional racism or that black and asian patients are being targetted unfairly so […]

The Times says that there are at least 8 other life saving drugs that are refused in England but provided on the NHS in Scotland.
This is probably part of the mysterious “union dividend” that Gordon Brown keeps talking about.  Where else in the world could 85% of the population be denied life saving cancer treatments […]

From the 1st of April the price of a prescription in England is to rise by 20p to £6.85 per item.
Most terminally ill patients, cancer sufferers and disabled people still have to pay for their prescriptions, as do asthma sufferers.  The whole idea of charging people for life-saving medication is just wrong but what is […]

A man living in England is considering moving to North Britain so that he can get a cancer treatment that he is not allowed in England.
The man, who is in remission from a rare terminal bone cancer, wants to be prescribed Velcade when his cancer comes back but the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) […]

A “muslim expert” has called for the NHS to provide a faith-based service.
He calls on the cash-strapped National Health Service to provide better access to prayer facilities, more information on alcohol-based treatments, circumcision of children and guaranteed same-sex medical staff.
The NHS is already short of cash and this is an unncessary and unreasonable demand to […]

The minimum age for buying cigarettes and tobacco products is to rise to 18 from October this year.
The new age limit will only apply to England and Wales and will bring England and Wales into line with the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia who also have a minimum age of 18.
Increasing the minimum legal […]

Source: BBC News
John Prescott, feeling unwell on Christmas Day, was visited by a doctor at his home, admitted to hospital, diagnosed with a kidney stone and discharged in the afternoon.
Getting a home visit from your GP is virtually impossible at the best of times, let alone on Christmas Day.  As for being admitted to hospital […]

EU not to blame for NHS woes
According to certain readers the EU is to blame for the failures in the NHS.Stuart Parr (Starmail, November 20) claims it has issued a directive removing the individual opt-out from the Working Time Directive, hereby forcing hospitals to cut services.
This is not true. The EU cannot just issue a […]

A No2ID press release today brings our attention to The Big Opt Out - a campaign against the national NHS database and the mass upload of patients details to the database without patients permission.
The Department of Health has instructed GP’s to upload patient details they hold - personal details, medical history, records of GP visits, etc […]

My local authority, Telford & Wrekin Council, has taken it upon themselves to offer to borrow £20m from the British government to help bail out our local hospital.
The loan would be paid through increases in our council tax bills but the people of Telford & Wrekin haven’t even been consulted - the decision has been […]

It’s looking increasingly likely that the lung cancer drug Tarceva will not be made available in England.
The drug is widely available in North Britain but NICE considers the drugs not to be an effective use of taxpayers money.  Money isn’t such an issue for our neighbours north of the border as it is the multi-billion […]

Hospital staff at the debt-ridden Shrewsbury & Telford hospitals might end up paying up to £120 per year for the privelege of parking at work.
The hospitals are struggling to clear a mountain of debt, hindered by the unwillingness of the Welsh government to pay the going rate for treating Welsh patients, the underfunding of the […]

Whilst sitting on the sofa in agony last night (I’ll explain later) I watched Holby City with Mrs Sane.
Part of the plot was an … unconventional … doctor who decided to help out a patient who had sold her kidney on the black market to pay for AIDS medication for her brother in Ghana.  Twice […]

Front page on todays Dail Mail:

Medical apartheid as English cancer patients are denied life-extending drug
Terminal cancer patients accused Health Secretary of condemning them to death because they are English after the NHS drug rationing body refused to fund a new wonder drug that is available in Scotland.
Patricia Hewitt came under fire from three women with […]

Three women confronted Patricia Hewitt on Wednesday at a Labour Stazi conference fringe meeting over the cancer drug Velcade being refused to English cancer sufferers.
The three women from Yorkshire are suffering from multiple myeloma, a rare bone marrow cancer, but are unable to have the only licenced treatment - Velcade - because it is not […]