Archive for Health

More health apartheid

March 7, 2008 Apartheid, England, Health One comment

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 are free of charge.

Not only do the English have to pay for their own prescriptions, they have to pay for Scottish and Welsh peoples’ prescriptions as well through the forced multi-billion pound subsidy taken from the English taxpayer under the Barnett Formula.

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NHS Discrimination

March 3, 2008 Health 4 comments

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% in England. Twelve hospitals in England make over £1m per year in parking charges.

Discrimination #2

A new inhaler has been developed for asthma sufferers that improves the rate at which the drug is absorbed into the body helping the estimated three quarters of patients who don’t have enough lung capacity to take their inhaler properly … take their inhaler properly.

The Scottish Medical Consortium (SMC) – the public body charged with spending English taxes on the NHS in Scotland – has already approved the new inhaler for use on the NHS but the laughably named National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) won’t make its decision until later this year and if it costs money I think we know what the decision is going to be.

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Brown interfering in English NHS again

January 7, 2008 England, Health, No Mandate 3 comments

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 in his own constituency in Scotland and whether it’s a “good” or “bad” thing that he’s doing, he still has no mandate.

However, there is little point in offering health screening if there is nothing to back it up with.  The English NHS is underfunded and the service provided is inferior to that in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  What is the point in getting an early diagnosis for cancer if you can’t get the right treatment because you live in England and not Scotland?

I don’t care whether this is, on balance, a positive move or not – Gordon Brown has no mandate to interfere with the English NHS.  If he wants to meddle with the NHS then he should stand for election to the Scottish Parliament where his constituents can give him a mandate over the Scottish NHS.

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Shut up Camoron

January 3, 2008 Health, Tories, WTF? 2 comments

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 English NHS.  Cleaning staff half-heartedly push a sweeper around the floor and nursing staff rub some anti-bacterial gel into their hands from time to time but that’s not enough.

Even 20 years ago you wouldn’t have seen stains on walls and ceilings on a ward or peeling paint in corridors.  You wouldn’t have seen dust on radiators and other flat surfaces.  Patients wouldn’t have had the same bedding for more than a day and you certainly wouldn’t have seen stained sheets on a bed.

The problem is down to money.  The NHS is under-funded but it still costs a fortune.  Every penny has to be accounted for and justified and performance targets are set to make sure that the money they get can provide a tangible benefit for the next election campaign.  All this bureaucracy, form filling and creative accounting requires batallions of managers, admin staff, bean counters and PR gurus.  Most of them don’t know the first thing about nursing or surgery and so they have to get the doctors and nurses to do their bean counting and form filling for them.  The introduction of so many new targets and the criticality of appearing to hit them in order to get more funding to cover costs means that managament of hospitals becomes more centralised with dictats being handed down from consultants, managers and directors instead of decisions being made on wards according to the needs of patients and staff.  Budgets are getting tighter, all the bureaucracy is costing more and costs need to be cut.  Nurses are no longer responsible for keeping their wards clean so contractors are brought in.  Money is tight so the cheapest bid wins.  It’s cheap for a reason.  Wards aren’t cleaned properly and the number of patients getting infections in hospitals goes up.  Patients are treated with antibiotics leading to the evolution of drug-resistant “superbugs” which end up killing patients.  Wards are closed, hospitals are sued and the budget gets even tighter.  You can see where this is all going …

The solution is to give the NHS the money it needs to provide a proper service but this doesn’t mean just giving them more money.  Money is wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy and the internal market.  Cutting down on the targets and centralised micro-management of the health service will free up resources to provide proper medical care.  The internal market – where hospitals buy services from other parts of the NHS as if they were seperate companies – should be scrapped.  It is a ridiculous concept that different parts of a public service should treat each other as if they were private companies and even aim to make a profit from each other.  It doesn’t encourage better financial management or better accountability – it just creates more pointless bureaucracy.  The NHS, like the state, needs to be scaled back significantly.  Waste and bureaucracy breeds more waste and bureaucracy.

Anyway, back to Camoron.  Fining hospitals every time they get a case of infection will deprive the NHS of much-needed cash compounding what is already a big problem for our under-funded hospitals.  Camoron really just needs to shut his trap because he clearly hasn’t got the faintest idea what it’s like in the real world.  He had a privileged upbringing, went to the same prep-school as Princes Edward and Andrew, went to Eton and Oxford University and then went into politics.  I very much doubt he’s ever experienced the NHS first-hand and he’s certainly never had a job as a “doer” rather than a “thinker”.  Politicians – particularly those born with silver spoons in their mouths – need to keep their noses out of the NHS and let medical staff get on with their jobs.

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NHS Constitution

January 1, 2008 England, Health, No Mandate 7 comments

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 English education system, the English health system and the English housing system even though he has no mandate over any of them.  Today I see that in return for the health system that we are paying for through our taxes, your Prime Minister has decided that we must have “responsibilities”.  But only in England.

The medical treatment which the English will be entitled to will still be inferior to the medical treatment his own Scottish constituents are entitled to and they will continue to receive their superior service without the “responsibilities” that the English must have.

David, YOU have a responsibility.  Your responsibility is to your constituents, NOT your party.  Gordon Brown was not given a mandate by his Scottish constituents to tell English people what they must do to receive medical treatment.  I assume you do understand that none of your Prime Minister’s proclamations on health, education, housing, etc. affect his own constituents – he has no more right to tell your constituents what medical treatment they can and can’t receive than you have to tell his constituents what medical treatment they can and can’t receive.

I cannot adequately express in polite terms how disappointed I am that you condone this unconstitutional, undemocratic and immoral system of apartheid.  How can you continue to support your party when it is doing everything it can to maintain the system that allows the Scottish ruling elite to make decisions in your constituency when neither they, nor you, can make the same decisions in their constituency?

If you play a part in breaking our health, education and housing systems I can – and will – vote for someone else who won’t do the same.  Gordon Brown’s constituents won’t care what he does to the English NHS or schools – they’re more likely to vote for him if they can see that he’s screwing the English over!

Poll after poll has shown that English people are fed up with your Scottish MPs interfering in English-only legislation.  Poll after poll has shown that English people want their own government like the one your party gave to Scotland.  It’s time you started doing your job David – represent your constituents, not your party.

Stuart

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Galileo, Galileo, will you do the fandango?

November 30, 2007 Federal Europe, Health, Transport 5 comments

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 us the “spare” part of our very generous subsidy back?

Galileo will consist of two receiving stations – one in Germany and one in Italy – and 30 mid-earth orbit satellites.

The EU Transport Commissioner, Jacques Barrot, said that “Spatial navigation is really an indication of our power amongst the countries of the world”.

As we’ve been told, repeatedly, the EU not-a-constitution will turn the EU into what is, to all intents and purposes, a country.  The aim of the EU, from when it was initially brought into being, was to create a Federal Europe.  The Schuman Declaration actually said that it was the first steps toward a European Federation.  The not-a-constitution hasn’t even been signed yet, let alone been approved in the planned Danish and Irish referenda, but the EU’s minions are already talking about the EU as a country.

Petty one-upmanship with the Americans is not only pointless and petty, but it costs the English taxpayer a fortune.  The American GPS system gives almost worldwide coverage and is free to use.  There is no need for a proprietry EU system to duplicate what is already there.

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Scottish woman travels to Malta for hip replacement

November 18, 2007 Health, Scotland 6 comments

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 surgery on my knees even though I’m overweight.  It probably helps that I’ve been seeing the same consultant since I was at school but it’s probably more the fact that he understands that when you have real trouble walking it’s very difficult to control your weight.

If surgery is being refused on the rather lame pretext of being overweight in Scotland, you have to wonder what all these billions we’ve been sending north of the border have been spent on.

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Hat-tip to “axel” (reader)

Virgin on ridiculous

November 15, 2007 Come the revolution, Health, Traitors, WTF? 11 comments

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 treatments because they don’t provide “value for money”.  But fake virginities do.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the only way we’re ever going to reclaim England from the traitors who are running the country into the ground is a revolution.

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How shameful that a child must beg for medicine

November 1, 2007 England, Health 42 comments

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 been.  I had never voted in my life until this year when I voted for Wonko in the local election.  As you can imagine, conversation dries up quite quickly in our house.  Most of what Wonko says either goes right over my head, or in one ear and straight out of the other.  However, on Tuesday, I decided that I would start to buy a newspaper every day to catch up on what is going on in the world.  I asked Wonkos advice and he said to get the Daily Mail. After only three days I am starting to understand what he has been ranting about for the past couple of years.  He’s asked me to write about one story that really caught my eye and actually upset me a bit.  I guess if you’re reading this, Wonko must have let my post get through his stringent editorial criteria!

The story was entitled “How shameful that a child must beg for medicine”.  A six year old girl called Chantelle Hill has been basically begging for money in her home town by putting up endless posters stating “please help me save my daddy”.  The reason she is doing this – her 45 year old “daddy” is dying of lung cancer.  So far Chantelle has raised more than £4000 to help buy the drug Tarceva, a drug that will help keep her father alive.  Chantelle’s father is too weak to undergo any more chemotherapy and the drug will help improve and prolong his life according to doctors.   However, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said the drug ‘was not an effective use of NHS resources’.  It is bad enough to hear that a six year old child is begging for money to keep her dad alive but even worse to hear that in Scotland, the drug is given free along with lots of other things.  The irony is that Chantelle’s dad is a taxpayer and therefore is probably paying for some man in Scotland to receive treatment that he is “unworthy” of receiving.  Who is going to explain to this child when she is older that her dad’s life was not as important to this country’s government as some other little girls dad in Scotland?  How can the government justify playing with peoples lives. What it all adds up to is that the government were willing to let this “daddy” die a painful death BECAUSE HE LIVES IN ENGLAND.  They were willing to let an innocent six year old child lose her father.  When is someone in Government going to raise their voice and stand up for the rights of English people?   When is someone going to make us feel valued and welcome in our own country instead of treating us like lesser human beings?  Who is going to stand in Government and make everyone see that we are damn proud to be English?

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Free Prescriptions for all …

October 23, 2007 Come the revolution, England, Health, Scotland 34 comments

… 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 day that prescription charges in England rose to £6.80 per item.  Paid for by the English taxpayer of course.

The Daily Mail is calling this “The Great Divide” and says that it’s the final straw for English taxpayers.  For me, the final straw whizzed by years ago and I’m now in a constant low-level rage aimed at this racist Scottish Raj.

My nan has Age Related Macular Degeneration (ARMD).  It’s the most common cause of blindness in over-60’s in England but can be cured.  Can she get it treated?  No.  She lives in England and therefore must go blind so that enough money can be stolen from the English NHS to pay for ARMD treatment in Scotland.  She worked and paid taxes all her life, right up until she was in her 50’s when she had to stop because of ill health.  She worked in a munitions factory during the Second World War while my Grandad was on the front line in Korea.  What reward does she get for her contribution to the country?  Second-rate, third-class treatment at the hands of the NHS – she even got a hospital superbug when she had a knee replacement!

My youngest son has Dyspraxia.  He was lucky enough to get it diagnosed at such an early age – 5 years old – because he can get help before he gets too far behind and loses interest at school.  He already complains that it’s hard at school and he has a concentration span you measure in seconds.  A doctor has referred him for speech therapy and occupational therapy.  There is one child occupation therapist for the whole county of Shropshire.  The NHS provides one child occupational therapist for around 444,000 people.  Unsurprising, then, that the waiting list is at least 12 months long.  In Scotland, they’ve been pumping money into occupational speech therapy for children since 2003 to improve the service.

Meanwhile, a new report by the Audit Commission into the English NHS says that one third of NHS Trusts were still in the red.

The American Civil War started on the premise of “No Taxation without Representation”.  The American colonies were taxed by the British government but weren’t allowed to vote.  The American colonies were subsidising Britain and got foreign rule in return.  Sound familiar?  Come the revolution, we’re going to need a big wall.

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In the Kingdom of the Blind …

October 20, 2007 Health One comment

… the one-eyed man is King …

Thanks to Scaffold from Cross of St George for animating by slides.

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NHS Review

September 18, 2007 Health, No Mandate One comment

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 Labour happy.  It has been suggested that GP’s should be paid more to see their patients out of hours, possibly by allowing them to charge patients to see them out of hours.

Lord Darzi’s report won’t be made public for another 3 weeks but it has been presented today to the rump cabinet.  No Mandate Brown looked particularly happy with the report – probably because if it all goes tits up it doesn’t affect a single person who voted for him.

Nurses forced to settle for inferior pay deal

September 15, 2007 Health 2 comments

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 been accepted which will mean a 3.4% increase for the lowest paid NHS workers but only a 2.08% increase overall.

No Mandate Brown’s excuse for offering nurses in England an inferior pay deal to the one given to his own constituents is that a staged pay increase is necessary to maintain low inflation and steady growth.

So, English nurses and NHS workers are required to accept an inferior pay deal to protect the economy but their Scottish and Welsh colleagues – doing the same job with bigger budgets – are allowed to have a better pay deal that Gordon Brown says will damage the economy.

More racism from the British establishment

August 10, 2007 Anglophobia, Health 10 comments

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 neither a national body, nor does it promote excellence.  Its decisions are used as guidance in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but their decisions are not binding on the equivalent bodies in those countries and it is becoming increasingly common for drugs to be prescribed in Scotland but refused in England.

The drug firm, Eisai, joined forces with the Alzheimers Society to challenge the racist and discriminatory decision from NICE but the High Court only found them guilty of discrimination in the screening process for people with learning disibilities or who speak English as a second language.  Doctors will now have the discretion to prescribe the drugs to people in those circumstances.

Once again the majority is discriminated against so the minority can be pandered to.  Scottish?  Take what you want, the English taxpayer will pay for it.  Can’t be bothered to learn the language of the country you’ve emigrated to?  Take what you want, the English taxpayer will pay for it.

Carry On Nurse

July 16, 2007 Health One comment

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 do the same job – in fact, English nurses have a harder time because there is less money available in the English NHS – so they should all get the same pay and conditions.

Would this happen if an English Executive concerned only with the prosperity and wellbeing of England was in charge of the English health service?

Buggering up the English NHS … again

July 1, 2007 Health, No Mandate One comment

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 until after his coronation, it’s the fact that the Barnett Formula is being fudged so that the cut in health funding won’t be passed on to Scotland that makes me so fucking angry.

The Goblin King has defended the Barnett Formula saying that it’s a fair way of distributing funding to the “nations and regions” based on need.

Blind to benefits of the union

June 14, 2007 Health One comment

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 Wet ARMD.  The condition usually doesn’t result in full blindness but affects the centre of the eye leaving the sufferer with only peripheral vision.

A drug is available that can help reduce the degeneration but the National Institute for Clinical Excellence refuses to approve it for use on the NHS in England despite the Scottish Medical Consortium approving it for use in Scotland, paid for by the English taxpayer.

Sickle Cell Anemia drug refused to English children

June 5, 2007 Health 5 comments

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 week by parents.  The new treatment is a tablet in the morning and a tablet at night.

The new treatment is, of course, available for free on the NHS in Scotland courtesy of the English taxpayer.

Sickle Cell Anemia is a painful disease that stays with the sufferer for life, decreases life expectency and causes eventual organ failure and strokes.

Am I missing something here?

June 2, 2007 Health One comment

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 I couldn’t talk.  Was I taken into hospital?  Nope, I went to the doctors and they gave me a course of steroids.  I didn’t even get a sick note – my boss ended up sending me home from work!

Smokers to get more help quitting

May 30, 2007 Health No comments

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 it is “likely to be a cost-effective use of resources”.

Meanwhile, cancer and alzheimers patients who don’t have a self-inflicted drug addiction, are still being refused life-saving drugs in England because NICE doesn’t think the life-saving drugs are a cost-effective use of resources.

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