We ride at dawn - for the NHS

[GloGirl]

Seriously, are we the public going to do anything about this? Can we coordinate a mass protest/march? Mini protests outside hospitals? Has everyone been writing to their MP?

I can't read these headlines any more, it's breaking my heart. I was sure during covid it would force the govt to reconsider its treatment of the NHS - that it would force a change in priority for social care, pay, structures, staffing.

How did we hit a new low, and just keep going? Who is with me??

What is it about the French that makes them so much better at resisting the worsening of ordinary peoples' living and working conditions?

I wonder if it's anything to do with them historically breaking up inherited power and dismantling feudalism with the French Revolution?

Whereas in the UK we still have roughly the same aristocratic families owning the land as we did then, plus a national attitude of deference to inherited power and wealth.

I'm baffled by your comments.

They know they’re not going to get 17%, it’s a starting point for negotiation (despite the fact they’ve had a approximately 20% pay cut in real terms).

They don’t get to decide who is seen and who isn’t. It’s not nurses that manipulate waiting lists and cut access, that’s a management decision (usually beyond a nurses pay grade…).

You mean they are complicit in as much as they do their job as directed? That’s ridiculous.

You should value nurses. You’re going to miss us when we’re gone.

We have a culture of subservience to authority. We still have a hereditary royal family!

If the system isn't working for you, maybe you should go. The NHS needs reform, not more bail outs.

I'd support a pay rise but only if we completely and utterly reform the whole NHS - regardless of the obstacles your unions put up which basically resist all change - and have nurses spending paid work time on union work, btw.

What we have now is 70 odd years of bureaucracy, which is why it needs huge reform. Just no one has the political will to do it, so I suppose it will collapse in on itself as all bureaucracies eventually do.

As it is I'm sick of the endless demands for money, the emotional blackmail and the refusal to reform or look inwards in any meaningful way.

We get the government we deserve. The majority voted for the Tories and Brexit. " coz foreigners and benefit claimants and Corbyn/ Starmer and not knowing what a woman is" and now we have this shit show.

Who should people vote for? The state of the NHS in Wales is even worse, under a Labour administration.

@SpanishSalsaing you’re conflating issues here.

I think most nurses would agree the NHS needs reforming, massively. We are tired and frustrated working within a bloated and failing system.

However that doesn’t mean we need to lie down and let the government fuck us over regarding pay and conditions. FWIW I am not a member of the RCN and didn’t strike (and neither did my colleagues) but support my nurse peers that did.

One can be part of the system and be deeply unhappy with how it’s managed, politically. IMO the sooner the NHS is depoliticised and social care is valued and funded accordingly the better.

Yes, and our middle class is overwhelming complicit and therefore has remained conservative (in the literal sense). I think it was bought off by the upper class when they saw what the peasants were up to in France during their revolution.

So the creation of the middle class in France was revolutionary - they had to get rid of the monarchy and hereditary power to get any say over their own lives. Here, the middle class collaborated with the aristocracy and that's why they're mostly still bumkissing the royals, and even Labour daren't declare itself republican - it would be too "radical" by our British standards.

All their dancing?? Seriously?????

Some staff helped raise moral (that was seriously rock bottom) by doing tiktok things IN THEIR OWN TIME. After a shift. Before a shift. During a break.

You have NO IDEA how utterly utterly awful, and terrifying and stressful it was on the front line during covid. No idea at all. Everyone I know in the NHS was working very long hours - not just an hour or two over, but many hours a week extra for free. I'm not clinical but was moved to provide support and 60 hour weeks became the norm. Paid for 37.5 hours. If staff didn't spend some time, just a short time, letting off a bit of steam, they'd have gone mad.

I don't know.. we didn't use to be.. i went on poll tax riots and even back then.. never paid it, despite numerous bills from 2 different local authorities.

I eventually went abroad to avoid paying, i knew so many people back then who protested, even our pop songs were riotous... now we get Ed Sheran.

We are a very right wing country and getting more so, todays Labour party would be similar to the Tories of the 70s even the 80s and todays Tories have more in common with RN or the Freedom Party, than Ted Heaths Conservatives.

We’re not a ‘very right wing country’. No death penalty, homosexuality and gay marriage is legal, hate crimes are taken seriously, generous maternity leave, very diverse cabinet, PM with an Asian background etc.

Of course people should live healthier lives but other things at play can influence their ability to. Being poor , stressed, bullied, abused, are just some of the reasons that people.turn to food /alcohol /drugs. Other conditions also influence one's ability to live a healthy life, rheumatoid arthritis doesn't leave you able to get up and jog every morning. Having diabetes is closely li ked to depression not to emotion all its other related issues. Ask any diabetic how it feels when you are judged for every morsel, that isn't a vegetable, you put in your mouth. Judged.

It's very easy to say eat better and exercise but not everyone can financially, emotionally or physically.

@JusteanBiscuits yeah I couldn’t believe that comment about dancing either. Just so utterly ignorant and ridiculous.

If people like the above poster had just one day facing what those nurses did during the pandemic they’d be on their knees. I know I couldn’t do it.

Right behind the OP, the people so cheerfully saying goodbye to the NHS will sorely miss it when it’s gone, but we get what we vote for (which is the current shitshow).

As for staffing levels, that was horribly hit through Brexit, instead of this jingoistic nonsense about immigration we should be begging those who went back to their own countries to come back. We should also stop taking the piss with our remaining healthcare workers who are being offered a lot more money to work elsewhere. My husband is a hospital doctor and we’d be quids in if we went elsewhere. Funny how other countries can afford higher wages for medics but this country can’t. Almost like they’re trying to break the NHS.

VOTE…

(smartly)

😂Dancing??? Creating waiting.lists?? Signing papers ??? What are you talking about ???

I agree. It was interesting to see Corbyn branded a dangerous communist recently, even though his politics are precisely the same as they ever were, I.e. parliamentary/democratic socialist.

British society may seem socially liberal in some ways, but it is politically and economically becoming more and more right wing.

I want this single issue to resolve. Voting on its behalf in a GE will blur and obfuscate.

Conservatives, SNP, Labour, Plaid Cynmru, Green Party, Sinn Fein, DUP, WEP - All voters need to get behind a resolution to fix the NHS. A revolution to fix it if needs be.

This is really hits the nail on the head for me. As an NHS nurse of 20 years. Thank you for getting it, Op.

FFS Do you ever read what is written?

I'm sure most people would consider RN and Freedom party right wing parties.... Do you consider the Brothers of Italy a right wing Govt/Coalition? or are they centralist because they don't hang people?

If you can't see the change in UK politics, then i can't help you.

I'm not as knowledgeable as some on here, and because of that don't know what needs to be done to improve things, other than clearly social care needs MUCH more money invested in it, BUT I do know that I want SOMETHING to be done! Can we not protest on that basis? Sadly, I'm disabled, and can't actually march, but, I have written numerous letters to my Tory MP, who actually claims to appreciate the NHS, says his family has used it, etc. However the fact is that private health care WILL NOT come to your rescue in an EMERGENCY!! So it's all very well saying let the system collapse, or we need something like the French or Germans have, or take responsibility for your own health, but that won't help you if a buses brakes fail, and you're run over by it, or you fall down the stairs and break your leg, back, etc. Like everything else, other systems can't be implemented overnight, but what could be done, is enough money injected into the system, to make ex NHS workers reconsider. If all of those who have left over recent years, could be tempted back, then it surely would mean that those who are currently still in nursing, would have more time to care for their patients, thereby feeling less stress, and less like quitting too? Put masses more money into social care, so that care workers feel appreciated, and they won't be leaving in droves either. The government and army pretty quickly managed to erect emergency hospitals during the pandemic, why not emergency convalescent homes? I'm sure some one will come along and shoot me down in flames, but what I'm saying is that I am willing to do whatever I am physically capable of, to make the government take some sort of action to sort this shit show out NOW!!

I don’t think money is the problem here. There will never be enough money /staff/ hospitals etc to cope with the ever growing population.

Plus stop dishing out fat cat salaries to layer upon layer of NHS ‘management.’

All the things you listed make us a socially liberal society, but economically and politically it is becoming increasingly right wing.

Why not? It's about priorities. And a bigger population means more taxes to fund the NHS, not less.

I don’t find it very right wing as I see many policies in Aus that are similar but Labor gov (my home country so what I’m used to)

Having said that many countries are shifting in Europe to right and imo it will continue as world pressures ramp up