Sending London patients to Yorkshire

[DeRigueurMortis]

It's been reported that due to capacity issues in London there is a proposal to send patients to Yorkshire.

London has more beds per capita than anywhere else in the country.

The nightingales have been dismantled.

In Yorkshire the rates have been high but (depending on north/south/east/west) brought into control though harsh lockdown. Those in tier 2 have been buggered by being inundated by Covid tourism and will be tier 3/4.

So Yorkshire is on the verge of it's own disaster with less beds per person than London and being overwhelmed by London cases before the local community can get a bed in their hospital.

Is it right that this should happen?

@LemonSquirtInTheEyeOfLife

Ah, excellent. I hope if / when cases in Yorkshire rise, people in Yorkshire are at least given equal access to them. What will happen to the patients from London when they start to recover? Will they be transferred back to London, or will they be stuck in Yorkshire, miles away from any family support, & expected to get home on their own when they're discharged? Ridiculous policy all round.

I can tell that you're from the London area. Out in the regions, people are moved to faraway hospitals all the time. People with, say, cancer, have to go to hospitals up to a hundred miles away for treatment. Even for routine scans/tests/x-rays, you're often asked to travel huge distances. A couple of years ago, when OH was having tests for cancer diagnosis, he had to travel to hospitals all over the North West to get the different types of scan, x-ray, bone marrow sample test, etc. For stem cell treatment, he would have had to spend a few weeks in a hospital nearly 200 miles away plus various daily trips before and after.

I live in Yorkshire and it doesn't bother me, I'd like to think if I was in that situation I'd be moved to a bed elsewhere?

Hoppinggreen That's true. They'll be allowed over the wall still.

@Burpeesshmurpees

The attitudes on here are horrible. I can't understand why so many people hate us. I feel like some people think we should build a wall around the M25 and fuck all those evil, rich, privileged Londoners. Honestly after reading this thread I really do hope I never end up in Yorkshire. It's pretty clear I wouldn't be welcome.

Sadly the angriest people will shout the loudest. As a representative for Yorkshire I would welcome you, and I'm sure most people here would too.

There's just also a lot of additional anger at the government that has been handily redirected to the public thanks to the media finding that divide and conquer generates more clicks.

Also, if you ignore EttaG who has posted far more than her fair share, I think you'd find most posts have been supportive if frustrated rather than blaming Londoners.

“They’ll never take our hospital beds”
Said Braveheart style but in a Yorkshire Accent.

And if you do end up in hospital here Burpees just end every sentence with “tha knows” and you will be fine, nobody will realise you are Southern

I believe that in WWII, a lot of children were sent out of London during the Blitz. Is this true?

My fil was sent to Scotland

Absolute rubbish. Most of West Yorkshire voted Labour.

And South Yorks

The problem is when people look at a map they might think the county is populated evenly. It isn't. There are 5 million people in Yorkshire but almost 4 million of them live in post industrial West & South Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire, is like the Highlands is in Scotland. Sparsely populated

Tier 2 (now Tier 4) people got themselves into this situation so they should deal with it themselves.

Where have these people been for 2020, do you have zero understanding how a virus works?

As a representative for Yorkshire I would welcome you, and I'm sure most people here would too

Hear hear

@Flaxmeadow

Absolute rubbish. Most of West Yorkshire voted Labour.

And South Yorks

The problem is when people look at a map they might think the county is populated evenly. It isn't. There are 5 million people in Yorkshire but almost 4 million of them live in post industrial West & South Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire, is like the Highlands is in Scotland. Sparsely populated

Yes, quite.

As I said upthread, the priority should be to save lives and if that means moving patients around, then it should be done.

But I'm tired of hearing Londoners say they were the "only ones to vote Labour", so everyone else is getting what they deserve from the Tories, when it's simply not true. It reinforces the 'London bubble' image - they can't see beyond the sea of blue in the south to the red in the midlands, Yorkshire and north east.

I'm not sure I've heard people saying that Londoners were the only ones to vote labour.

See upthread for one example - Charley50 Wed 30-Dec-20 11:37:04

It's a misconception that's often aired on Mumsnet.

I'm in Liverpool, obviously our Alderhey is for Europe. We get patients from the whole of the UK in our Walton Neuro hospital. In our other hospitals it tends to be Welsh patients. This has always happened.

I would hope that this whole crisis now makes people look at politics from a national pov. So I don't think it's a bad thing.

SantasBritchesSpelleas The point about who voted Labour and who didn't was raised in the context of some PP saying it was Govt policies had caused the decimation of NHS beds in the north and that it wasn't fair Londoners were going to fill them up the few that remained empty, as though Londoners were somehow responsible for that policy when in fact the capital is a Labour stronghold and very anti-Tory. We certainly weren't saying we're the only ones to vote Labour, as we know that's simply not true.

@ThelmaNotLouise

SantasBritchesSpelleas The point about who voted Labour and who didn't was raised in the context of some PP saying it was Govt policies had caused the decimation of NHS beds in the north and that it wasn't fair Londoners were going to fill them up the few that remained empty, as though Londoners were somehow responsible for that policy when in fact the capital is a Labour stronghold and very anti-Tory. We certainly weren't saying we're the only ones to vote Labour, as we know that's simply not true.

You might not have been saying Londoners were the only ones to vote Labour, Thelma. I was replying to Charley50 who made that claim.

SantasBritchesSpelleas That was one poster though, while you said you were sick and tired of Londoners saying it. I guess just wanted to point out we don't all think that, in the same way not everyone from Yorkshire is against people using their beds!

I said 'London is almost the only part of the country that voted Labour in at the last election', not the only part. (Can't do italics).

https://thestrayferret.co.uk/nhs-insists-harrogate-nightingale-can-take-patients-if-required/?utmcontent=buffer7789a&utmmmedium=social&utmsource=facebook.com&utmmcampaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR0yC1h3u792FxuUsEGDDRxVt5-gGx2BZSm0QtMumOFIjkrYKre5kW77ulk

Anyway sorry for generalising. It's just annoying when people start threads blaming 'Londoners' for government policy and fuckups.

'Can we stop blaming the North for voting in the Tories when most of their votes came from Southern seats still. Yorkshire still voted Labour as a whole, as did the urban areas of the North West and North East.

And again, can we stop falling for this absurd divide and conquer rhetoric about North v South, young v old etc - there's been 3 decades of bed reductions in the NHS across three political parties which has halved capacity. Let's get mad about that rather than pointing fingers at each other.'

@MoltenLasagne - I agree with you. Apologies for my simplistic post.

Dear lord! i honestly cannot believe some of the comments on this thread, shocking!

Whats happening in hospitals down south is utterly horrendous. I say this as a northerner btw! living in a north city with two huge adult hospitals!

Patients being transferred all over the country isn't anything new! the NHS is a NATIONAL and thank god it is!. No way should ANY hospital be sitting there with beds available when people need them, I honestly despair at the lack of humanity on this thread.

What needs addressing as a matter of urgency, is a complete overhaul of the tired system. It's a national crisis not just a london/SE one. Building a tiered system based on what local infection rate and bed capacity is now null and void, if we need to start moving patients around the country to support area's who no longer have capacity.

According to local news there was over 11 thousand people shopping in Meadowhall yesterday, they put a bloody announcement out asking people to wrap up warm as they would need to queue outside to get in. We cant allow that to continue, in the same way that London probably shouldn't have been in tier two for 5 weeks following the November lockdown, the North needs moving to tier 4 to support the NHS, no matter where in the country the patients bloody live!