Thread 20 Sunak and the Winter of Discontent

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4672210-thread-19-from-trussterfuck-to-sunakered

My ds peadiatric neurologist referred him to adult neurology because he has a neurological condition.

The neurologist felt he'd better be served by rehabilitation medicine. He should have been under both.

So he's on a medicine only neurologists can prescribe which won't be monitored and he's under genetics because it's genetic and no one will be chasing that.

So now I'm going to have to chase through the GP for their referral to be accepted.

As a child (he's only just 18) he was seeing a general neuro and specialist neuro every 6 months each. So 4 neuro apts a year.

I agree with everything L1ttledrummergirl said about why people aren’t demonstrating about the NHS being starved to death by the Tories.

I honestly feel that social media has made most people using it live in echo chambers so for those that this NHS crisis doesn’t affect they won’t be seeing the problems.

And then it feels like Brexit has divided us and made us live more separately in our bubbles, plus the past twelve years of corrupt Tory government and lying Johnson in particular has pretty much broken what faith a lot of people had got left in the political process to help us change things for ordinary people.

The financial fall out of tje pandemic has been horrific and made social and economic inequalities even starker. Genuinely it feels like now so many more people are so beaten down because of being frightened about eating, heating and just getting by as best they can, that maybe protest just seems pointless or frivolous. They know the government doesn’t care about them.

It’s a tiny gesture by the way but I’m making a point of going over and wishing all the strikers I have seen on picket lines over the last few weeks all the best, because I am so pleased to see anyone trying to stop this economic race to the bottom.

I've been doing the same. We also delivered chocolates, biscuits to A&E and those plus cans of coke to the ambulance snack store before Christmas as they were low when dh was being cared for.

It's not often you see hcp with tears in their eyes, and was unexpected but, not gonna lie, we left with a warm fuzzy feeling which wasn't the intended motivation. It was a tiny drop in the ocean but hopefully made some difference however small to the staff.

Dh had just been observing the need for readily available snacks for the ambulance crews to grab between jobs, and noticed that the stocks were low. He just wanted to say thank you.

How to bolster relations between public sector workers & the Government. Let's sack some nurses.
But it's not really about any practical use - it's a cynical ploy to excite the right.

"Rishi Sunak is poised to announce minimum strike legislation as soon as tomorrow

It will enable employers to sue unions and sack employees if they refuse to accept

Hearing six sectors covered - NHS, schools, rail, borders, fire, nuclear"

The strike law will remove legal protections from unions & employees if they refuse to provide minimum level of service

Will mean employees could be sacked for breach of contract if they were designated to work but refused to do so. Unions could be sued

twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1610761403622637568?s=46&t=uKjcCeUC-MXStAN2UeuDgA

Every time I hear about this government and their attitude to workers I get the image of Victorian mill owners in my head. There's a very strong wiff of ownership about it.

What happens when they all resign en masse?
Who treats the patients then or teaches the students?

Thats definitely general strike territory.

I agree. I don't think the Government's legislation is about keeping the public safe (staffing levels are higher in some areas on strike days!) or money or inflation it's a show of strength.

exactly, it’s just bully boy tactics. It won’t resolve staffing issues.

Even "Work To Rule" would disrupt those sectors, refusing to work overtime or do anything beyond contractual obligations would show up just how much industry relies on employee goodwill to operate.

In my experience, strikes and similar employment disputes are always, with no exception, the result of bad management.

Well, this is going to be fun. Mass staff walkouts coming. Which, in the NHS, will mean those people coming back as costly agency workers. In the rest of the fields mentioned, outright chaos. When will this lot of shysters reach rock bottom?

Just seen someone in The Guardian comments refer to Rishis Soonaxed.

Genius,

We can only hope…

Not soon enough!

L1ttledrummergirl what a lovely thing you did for ambulance workers. That’s brilliant. ❤

Sunak will do well to cling on to the next election - he's got Braverman, Johnson and Truss all on permanent manoeuvres looking for space to muscle in.
That said they can't possibly imagine the country will put up with another leadership change, can they?

I thought Starmer's speech was alright yesterday. Appreciate that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise but it was better than Sunak's rushed 5 point plan. No pretence at getting the cheque book out to solve every issue, acknowledging the state of our current situation, repeal the pointless new strike legislation. It was a holding card but that's not a surprise given we don't when the next election will be held.

Thank you but its such a small thing I wouldn't normally mention it. I only did because of the strong reactions, there is something very wrong when a tiny thing can break through a person's emotions so easily. Those staff were beyond breaking point but they keep going. It's incredible.

@Notonthestairs, I have to say I wasn't blown away by what I've heard so far, but to be fair I've not had much chance to listen to most of it yet.

I don't like the 3 word slogan on the podium, it screams more of the same.
I keep hearing about major changes they want to make, e.g house of Lords.

I want to hear that they are going back to basics, they are going to do a full and proper audit, that they are talking to staff on the ground and asking them what they need, then providing it.
I want them on picket lines, listening.
I want them to lay the gender arguments to rest, be consistent and stop fudging with the language, that's a tory trait.
I want them to be showing more genuine emotion, compassion, sadness, joy, despair, and some anger at the tories. I want to believe that they have the tools to bring change for the better, and the will to implement real hard changed for the better.
I want them to ho back to basic.

There just seems to be something missing. They were flying a few months ago but something seems to have changed and it worries me that we could walk into an election, change the players but not the score.

"I want to hear that they are going back to basics, they are going to do a full and proper audit, that they are talking to staff on the ground and asking them what they need, then providing it.
I want them on picket lines, listening.
I want them to lay the gender arguments to rest, be consistent and stop fudging with the language, that's a tory trait.
I want them to be showing more genuine emotion, compassion, sadness, joy, despair, and some anger at the tories. I want to believe that they have the tools to bring change for the better, and the will to implement real hard changed for the better.
I want them to ho back to basic."

I agree. There is a lot of tiptoeing around issues at the moment. They are trying not to scare the horses.

It seems the post Windrush commitments won't be implemented after all

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/06/suella-bravermann-plans-to-ditch-key-windrush-pledges

A Whitehall source said the decision to drop Williams’ recommendations was supported by Downing Street and was meant to curb potential critics of Sunak’s flagship policy.

Absolutely.

Except all it actually does is highlight their weaknesses.

The legal challenge may well come over definitions of safety. Politicians have used 'safety' and 'service' levels interchangeably. The shoehorning of the education sector into an otherwise list of 'blue light' sectors is very telling and Sunak himself tripped up a bit on that yesterday talking about emergency care. I guess it will be the same 'keyworkers' /Covid squabble but Covid was a public health emergency and one or two days of strike isn't.

What's quite plain when they talk of 'disruption' is they don't mean safety levels at all, they mean service levels.

It's extraordinary isn't it, that Patel is starting to appear quite reasonable??

Braverman is doing some sort of talk thing at our local church on Friday. Fiver a ticket.

I'm almost tempted to go 🤣🤣🤣

You mean you get a fiver for going?

Shouldn't be welcome in a church due to the absolute unChristian policies towards immigrants