Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 5

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Starting a continuation thread in anticipation of the fourth one filling up…

www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4?page=39

Oh FFS read your own link. You were linking to an out of date article talking about junior doctors with a huge banner at the top of the page stating very clearly ‘junior doctors are now resident doctors’. You wee wrong. Maybe you should start concentrating on facts rather than just insults. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Pathetic

Honestly what difference does the name change make? They're still junior doctors.

So you were all wrong about that. So following yout logic, you must be wrong about the rest as well.

But I knew that anyway 🤣

Another jibe? And once again….Did you look at the date on the article?!! I can’t see the wood for the trees? This is so classic. You get it all wrong and bluster on with insults and deflection saying their job title doesn’t matter! Aside from even the job title which you got wrong , it’s 2024 information about strikes.You even try to ridicule my daughter training to be a doctor. I would wait to see what yours achieves first as I believe she is still in primary. You can pay for what you believe is a better education but that doesn’t guarantee anything.

@KendricksGin - you live in West London? Did you children really not use facilities in local private schools?

Of the top of my head, the facilities my 4 DC used over many years are outdoor activity camps, art gallery extensions, all swimming lessons and swim club, music extension orchestras, fireworks nights, rugby clubs, all netball clubs, loads of cricket clubs, loads of hockey clubs, some tennis clubs, lots of summer childcare, maths extension clubs run by the private schools for kids in local state schools.

Now if Labour policy leads to lots of these schools closing, who exactly is going to be suffering? Our local state schools are not providing much of the above. None have swimming pools. Most of the leisure centre pools are not fit for swimming lessons. Even most of the cricket grounds are owned by private schools.

So all of the people baying for this, did your children really never ever make use of private schools facilities? Because we did. And at secondary level, it is even theatre halls for drama for some state schools who do not have the facilities.

A lot of sports matches between private and state schools are on the grounds of the private schools, because they can do more teams playing at once.

The name change is very significant. Junior doctors covered everything below consultant so there were actually very senior snd experienced doctors with 20 years experience with a ‘junior’ moniker. It’s like calling an Associate in a law firm a junior lawyer. It was inaccurate so it was changed. When ‘junior doctors strike’ is all over the press and news, even more important so the public understands who exactly is striking. The lack of insight in these posts supports that.

In the context of this thread it makes no difference whatsoever.

Pretty much the whole of my own family and DH's are doctors so I have a coal face understanding.

There is one private school slightly further afield that is well known. They were spending close to 2 million a year on the community. They now have to pay a huge whack in business rates, so they cannot spend that same money on the community anymore. They have no choice because they had to cut some of the fees to keep the parents happy.
So the money has gone to the Council.
Clearly this school did way more than they had to. The Charity Commissioner cannot exactly say to them that they need to keep that level up. If the Charity Commissioner challenges any school who is now just making ends meet and who has cut everything right done, well they cannot, practically speaking.

Well your coal face understanding must be out of date if you didn't know that.

However, if you are surrounded by doctors, do you think any of them would think 'Screw you' at any level about their sick patients if they were striking? That's the crux of this. What kind of person would think like that? That's the calibre of thinking of individuals on this thread and their level of decency.

They think doctors striking is utterly immoral.

And while I may know that they are no longer called 'junior', in the context of this thread it's an irrelevance.

I don’t think this applies to @strawberrybubblegumbut I do think it’s part of the reason Labour decided to go with such a poor policy. People don’t mind damage to a sector or dc education disrupted because it hits the right note on an emotional not reasonable level. Sadly.

Deflection. It is relevant in that the poster was insulting me for not knowing anything when it was them who had got it all wrong. True to form.

You didn't answer the main question. Would these doctor relatives ever, under any circumstances, think 'screw you' about their sick patients and, if they think striking is immoral, what the fuck would they think of that attitude?

I suspect they would never think 'screw you' in the context of patients generally.

I also suspect there are a few individual patients who they might very well feel that about privately... it would not be normal if that wasn't the case.

Doctors striking is legal in most countries, provided notice periods are adhered to and there is sufficient emergency medicine and planning.

VAT on Education is quite atypical, internationally speaking. There is no other country that charges a 20 per cent penalty on Education.

It always helps to put these things in an international context.

Police/army strikes are illegal.

Most client facing professionals think screw you about certain clients, doctors or not. However, they put their professional duty foremost.
Just like teachers will have certain thoughts about certain kids and parents.
How naive to think otherwise.

No it was a ‘slight “screw you” to patients in the abstract.” Not individual patients. So the opposite of what you interpret. Maybe read the post again before judging others’ naïveté.

Yes I don’t know how we end up on these tangents (cough cough @KendricksGin ). The point is education tax can only have negative consequences, some won’t feel these consequences until a long way down the line but for some families forced out their schools over the next 2 years it can be devastating. It’s based on utter spite and is designed to close schools, that is its purpose. It has broken the social contract and is unforgivable.

I would be astounded if no striking doctor ever thought 'Feck it, I'm going on strike. You guys are just going to have to reschedule (non-life-saving, non-time-critical) treatment, because I'm sticking up for myself. If you want things to be better, then bloody well get on to your MPs and tell them to restore our pay. I've had enough of taking whatever crap is thrown at me'

That's what a 'slight' screw you 'in the abstract' looks like. ('In the abstract' meaning 'not a specific patient who needs care.')

But I'm happy to defer to @ohcrumbswherenow about whether striking doctors (whatever their job title) would ever let such thoughts cross their mind.

(In addition to the other not-completely-sainthood-level thoughts other pp have mentioned)

I'm not going to speculate on what thoughts doctors would have if some of their patients had vocally supported a government policy which deliberately made things worse for doctors for absolutely no patient benefit. Perhaps you're right that they are so altruistic that they would just let it wash over them. I'm not.

two more schools gone

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/top-welsh-independent-school-set-31586624

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/second-private-school-wales-faces-31596910

Wrong end of the stick, again.

It wasn't about them sticking up for themselves and putting themselves first.

Doctors can only legally strike for a pay deal. This had to be the banner but they were generally much more concerned about better terms and conditions and mainly because of the risk to patients with the current sad state of affairs. You would do well to read the letter the Tory Government of the time on the last page of This is going to hurt. And @OhCrumbsWhereNow I would suggest you do the same before judging the immorality of doctors striking.

So aggressively protective of anything which affects your DD @KendricksGin .

All parents are defensive of their children. Private school parents too.

Now try to imagine this. I'm putting it in terms which may resonate.

Imagine that the government decided to cut hospital budgets / doctor's pay by 20%, and additionally made hospitals start paying business rates. Not to balance the budget, but because they think it's unfair that doctors earn more than the UK average of £31k and it's their pet project to replace all GPs with nurse practitioners. They tried to bring that law in a couple of years ago and failed - so this is the back route. And they're doing this knowing that it will be worse for patients... and knowing that it will actually cost them more in law suits... so it will cost more than the status quo...but they're doing it anyway out of ideological desire to take doctors down a peg or two.

Imagine the government were using divisive language, saying that doctors were bleeding the country dry, taking 10% of our entire GDP for themselves (and the government will give that money 'back to the people'! ) Which is exactly as true as private schools being a tax break (ie not).

Imagine that patients fell for that rhetoric, and made thread after thread saying hateful things about doctors. That doctors are so arrogant. That nurses can do anything they can. That doctors are lazy and if they cared about their patients, they would work more hours for free to bring down the shocking waiting lists.

Imagine that you went on those threads for months, to defend doctors and to try to explain the harm it would cause to medicine in the UK - because it was so blindingly obvious that all patients would suffer - and you heard so many hateful things said about your DD, by people who you knew will be helped by your DD.

Imagine that now, the law has been passed. You're watching doctors being made redundant from hospitals, units closing, patients not getting care.

But people still come on here, saying that job losses are normal, and it's a natural adjustment in the industry. No care for the patients failed, or the doctors losing jobs. Failed for no reason, no benefit to anyone.

Can you imagine how angry you'd feel? How disillusioned?

Probably not. I'm sure you'll find some detail in what I've written to fixate on, and insist that it's all totally different.

But if you're able to allow yourself to actually imagine this, you'll get a slight idea of how angry I am and why. Only a slight idea, because until it happens you can't really believe that the government and some of the population are so stupid and so vindictive.

Until it happens to doctors (which affects your DD) rather than private schools (which doesn't) you won't really understand how that would change your entire relationship to our society. We're mothers. A society which deliberately tries to bring down our kids loses us entirely.

So bitter, yes. Angry, yes. Blame Labour for that.

Oh, just to add to the scenario: your DD's job is safe, but she's had a 10% pay cut and some of her colleagues have been made redundant.

The patient failings and lawsuits have started. And one of the lawsuits forced the government to admit that it knew this would happen all along.

Yet even now, patients are demanding that the doctors should do more, work more free hours: even on their 10% lower pay. Lower pay which due to the related increased costs has benefitted noone, only been a cost to the doctors.

The government pretty well did do those things to doctors, hence the strikes! For 'junior' doctors (or resident doctors or trainees or whatever you want to call them) the contract changes took away pay progression whilst on maternity leave, effectively cutting women's pay. This was acknowledged by the gov at the time as being discriminatory but it was 'proportionate' so legally allowed.

The new system for jobs immediately out of medical school is literally a lottery - your CV is irrelevant, your place is randomly picked somewhere in the UK. That's worse than being in the army! We get bugger all travel expenses and no relocation expenses.

Consultants went on strike because of pay erosion over many years which means being a doctor in the UK pays way less than most developed countries.

The gov & GMC are totally failing to regulate 'associate physicians' and 'anaesthetic associates' properly with risks to patients, pus taking jobs away from doctors in training.

I have zero loyalty to the NHS - I'm a single employee in a massive organisation, I'm not responsible for the problems or fixing them.

It's ok now I'm a consultant but I spent many years in jobs where I'm literally rather have a broken arm than work the weekend. Totally normal for people to discuss what injury would be worth having just for the time off work. It's brutal and I would not recommend going to medical school in the current climate.

Sorry for the derail from private school chat! Also as a patient what I want from a doctor is clinical competency and fluency in English. I do not give a damn what school they went to or what their childhood social circumstances were.

4 more schools announced closures this week.

There’s lots of (state) academy trusts announcing likely staff redundancies as well. It’s almost as if the VAT policy isn’t producing enough revenue to fund improvements in the state sector……..