To ask how you feel about the NHS?

[AnotherEffingOrangeRevel]

"A new mandate to NHS England is due to be published following the completion of the Spending Review, to take effect from April 2016."

We have ONLY TILL THE 24TH NOVEMBER to comment on this mandate (link below).

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/setting-the-mandate-to-nhs-england-for-2016-to-2017

It's not well publicised (surprise surprise), as the article below points out:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/19/nhs-mandate-england-consulation-deadline

If you want to have your say, get in there now. Don't let them sneak it past us!

You're welcome, Sonja. Thank you!

This is great, thanks. My local pm is phoning me back to discuss my concerns about education, nhs snd police. I agree with some points but where they envisage all these staff are going to come from is beyond me.

Mp, not pm-that would be impressive if I had dc on the end of the phone!!

I've just tried to submit a response, but apparently the recipient's mailbox is full so it has not been delivered

You're kidding, Phil!

Marking my place so I do this. I had a most enjoyable evening filling out a Gov consultation on physical activity / fitness a while back.

This is the email I got:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

[email protected] ([email protected])
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.

Followed by a load of diagnostic jargon.

Garlick have you ever considered a career in health service management? I would put you in charge immediately.
Another weary NHS worker here struggling to stay awake after a long day.

Our "juniors" (with ten years training so far) are struggling because they don't want to strike but one who is the sole breadwinner for her family is expecting a 30 percent pay cut and won't be able to pay her mortgage if this goes through. We all sympathise so may have a public protest on the day while keeping the doors open and working anyway.
I'm so glad I only have a few years left till retirement. I fear that DC and his cronies with shares in private health care companies are just starving the NHS into submission then when the service is truly on it's knees they will come in suggesting a bright shiny solution - privatised medicine.

Arrgh. Am I paranoid or are they really out to get me?

Bump.

Policy doc with link to response form

Heh, Top, I wouldn't get that job, would I?!

You're not being paranoid. That's exactly what the government's doing.

Another person reporting the "mailbox full" message over on this thread: Did you know there is a public consultation about the NHS that closes on 23rd November?

I have just had the most frustrating conversation possibly of my life with the DofH. The mailbox is full, no they don't know when it might be able to accept responses again, they don't have any alternative method for us to send them in (they initially suggested the general "Contact us" form but turned out that that didn't work either), no there is nobody else I can speak to either in the Consultation team or any complaints team and - the best bit - no, they don't think that there is anything wrong with this situation. When I asked what I should do, I was told that I would just have to keep trying the email address and that they hoped it might be back up and running at some point. I noted that some of us were doing this during our lunch hours and weren't necessarily able to spend the next 48 hours sitting at the computer pressing "send" repeatedly, but the gentleman to whom I spoke interrupted me and said rather loudly "You're not listening to me!". He seemed to be of the opinion that the acceptance of consultation responses was in fact a great favour offered by the DofH to the plebs.

It casts a whole new light on the frustrations the junior doctors must have felt - sheesh. It does worry me a bit that the people who are technically responsible for keeping the life support machines on (ok, I'm exaggerating, but you take my point - they are in a very general sense responsible for us having life-saving technology generally in our hospitals) can't work their mailboxes. And see no need to apologise for this.

I think I'm turning into my mother. Sorry...

They're taking the exercise seriously, then...

Comment on the Guardian article:

IMPORTANT Delete the logo image from the form before sending your reply!

The logo in the header of the response form is 2mb in size which is making the file too big for their mailbox to receive. All replies are bouncing saying the mailbox is full. The mailbox is not full, this is just the standard response when an email is rejected for being too big!

It seems that, as well as not telling people about the consultation, they have made their response form bigger than the maximum accepted size for their mailbox so that none of the responses are ever received.

I've uploaded a reply form without the logo. Here it is: 1drv.ms/1QynoR0

Bumping this for people to see the logo issue - how to make sure you don't get too many replies with answers you don't want to hear….
Just because we may be paranoid, does not mean that they are not out to get us….

Thanks for the form, Garlick. Mine is sent (copied in my local Tory MP as well).

Oh, good idea Maid. I'll send my Tory yes-man a copy as well.

I'm not trying to sound like a burnt out cynic here, but as a front-line NHS nurse I have been through many consultation processes, and in the end the powers that be will just do what they want anyway. I'm afraid I have to agree with a PP that owing to this years election results, the NHS is now officially fucked.

Yes, it is and I am angry.

But I will speak. (If filling in a form & sharing it counts as speaking.)

What I find totally baffling is who actually voted for this government with an apparent intention of destroying the NHS. Because I work in Health Care everybody I work with is distraught about the lack of funding and commitment. I haven't managed to track down a single person who admits to voting Tory even though all our MPs here are blue. Weird! It must have been the patients!

Bump

Also bumping and will be sharing to my fb friends. It's shocking how this has slipped under the radar.

I agree book. It's quite common practice for policy makers to slip these kind of things in whilst the public is preoccupied with other things. In our case the uk media is dominated by the Isis atrocities to the point that any other news items iare totally overshadowed. I am not saying that our administration planned this, only that they are quite possibly utilising people's business to slip this in unchallenged.

You've got to worry about the competence of a government that can't even run a simple public consultation exercise without (a) failing to tell anyone that they are doing it and (b) making basic errors regarding the (very simple) IT requirements.

I think this is pretty shocking!