Thoughts for the day
Feb. 20th, 2004 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyIf suicide isn't a selfish act, how come people who jump under trains tend to do it during rush hour when it'll screw up the day for thousands of other people?
Have you ever noticed how much John Willams' Superman theme owes to Aaron Copelands' Fanfare for the Common Man?
If you play Lucretia, My Reflection by the Sisters of Mercy at 1.4x speed, it stops being a morbid dirge and becomes quite a fun dance track. However, if you play This Corrosion by the same band at the same speed multiple, it sounds like Pinky & Perky singing it.
Aneurin Bevan, when he founded the NHS in 1946, predicted that as time went by the NHS would make the populace of the UK healthier and so the cost of running the service would decrease. More than 50 years later, we're still waiting.
Have you ever noticed how much John Willams' Superman theme owes to Aaron Copelands' Fanfare for the Common Man?
If you play Lucretia, My Reflection by the Sisters of Mercy at 1.4x speed, it stops being a morbid dirge and becomes quite a fun dance track. However, if you play This Corrosion by the same band at the same speed multiple, it sounds like Pinky & Perky singing it.
Aneurin Bevan, when he founded the NHS in 1946, predicted that as time went by the NHS would make the populace of the UK healthier and so the cost of running the service would decrease. More than 50 years later, we're still waiting.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 04:08 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 04:14 am (UTC)The population is healthier. Lifespans have increased drastically. People no longer wander around unable to see properly because they can't afford glasses, unable to hear because they can't afford hearing aids and dying from infections because they can't afford hospitalisations.
What Bevan didn't predict was the change in what was possible for medicine to do, and how much that would cost. I think he can be forgiven for that, but there were other flaws in the system that we're still living with.
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Date: 2004-02-20 04:20 am (UTC)Whilst i wouldn't advocate the privatisation of the NHS at this time, I would advocate removing the administration of national insurance from central government control, in the same way as was done with the Bank of England.
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Date: 2004-02-25 07:58 pm (UTC)On what planet does that makes sense?
And competing 'products' in healthcare just breeds confusion and knock off merchants.
It's NOT a commodity to be traded, it's life itself.
Certain things shouldn't BE commerical or done for profit, they should be done for cost.
* - Power production.
* - Water.
* - Healthcare.
* - Education.
Involving money takes away from the goals of these things and distorts them into being 'make money' as a primary goal, which causes other aspects to suffer.
G
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Date: 2004-02-26 01:34 am (UTC)As for the things that 'shouldn't' be done for profit, on what grounds are your arguments based, or is it just emotional knee-jerk stuff?
Certainly I'd agree on free education for all, but the educational system that we have is incompatible with that premise. It's require a significant shift in focus of the system for that to work. Water at cost ditto; privatising water was an error, but then again 'at cost' implies water metering to be perfectly fair within that system, so a rating system is probably more equitable all things considered.
I see no reason why power generation shouldn't be done for profit, as anyone can do it (in theory); I could set up a wind tower in my garden and sell the power thus generated inot the national grid if I so desired, and I see no reason, morally or legally, why someone should be prevented from doing so (aside from the neighbours complaining aboutthis tower in my garden, but you see where I'm coming from). As for healthcare, free healthcare is a bottomless pit that is increasingly unsustainable. What would make sense would be to prioritise the NHS - i.e. 1) emergency care, 2) life preserving, 3) etc (or whatever priorities they might like to set for themselves.).
This prioritisation should be left in the hands of the providers, as should the disbursement of funds thereof; removing the control of national insurance from central government is probably the best way to achieve this.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 04:27 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 04:29 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 11:34 am (UTC)And essentially it's a botomless pit. Those mad scientists can't be dissuaded from coming up with more and more spiffy new medical treatments which increase people's quality of life and help them to live for longer. And they do this without regard to how much these treatments will cost the taxpayer.
I freely admit (as I'm now on an NHS 'Management' payscale) to being part of the problem. It's my job to ensure that people get top quality, evidence based treatment, whoever they are and wherever they live.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 05:15 am (UTC)Boo for lengthy operations that cost £30,000 and give people about three days of life!
Boo for short-term emotion rather than utilitarianism being used to administrate a national institution!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 05:31 am (UTC)b) Agreed; that's money which could very easily and with greater benefit to the betterment of society at large be spent elsewhere
c) I'm not sure that short term- emotion was what resulted in the bureaucracy heavy institution we've got (see notes above). I suspect it's long term insistence on hanging on to outdated and discredited social and political ideas which has resulted in a great deal of unnecessary suffering and waste.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 05:41 am (UTC)The fact is, though, it does cost more to keep people alive when they're elderly, and whereas you rarely get soap opera/philosophical exercise of "really old man vs young girl, who gets the heart?" for every operation, aftercare or medication there's a cost incurred. A cost that could go towards something more long term.
Of course, it's okay for me to say something like this, now; I'm only 26. Come my seventieth birthday, it's most unlikely you'll find me taking the noble Winter Wolf.
I'm not sure what you seem to think is the 'discredited social and political idea' that has been discredited. The NHS, as any fule no, was set up as a reaction to the realisation that after WWII there were a lot of wounded and sick people who needed care, or had been put into so much destitution and poverty by being widowed/orphaned/bombed and that charity alone wasn't going to cut it. Oh, Nye Bevan had his morals, certainly, but that was what pushed it through. I think the NHS as an institution is poorly administrated with varying different trusts all competing against each other, but
What I object to is paying into a State Pension fund when it's blatantly clear that by the time we get to retire there won't be anything to claim.
That and Nesta - Brr!
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Date: 2004-02-20 05:45 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 05:48 am (UTC)The reason being, people are stupid. Look at Credit Unions, HP, Double Glazing, an edition of Watchdog. You open a free market on basic social care, and people will be ripped off by shysters.
Of course, personally I believe stupid people should be penalised, but that's not a palatable view.
I'd rather have a nanny state than one which lets you fall out of the pram.
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Date: 2004-02-20 05:54 am (UTC)Re:
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Date: 2004-02-20 06:02 am (UTC)/me channels the spirit of Kinnock.
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Date: 2004-02-20 09:02 am (UTC)I hate to burst your bubble here but that is not what you are doing.
The money you are currently paying is not</> being saved for your pension. If it was being invested for you it wouldn't vanish when you got to retirement - well it might, but not for the same reason. It is being used to pay for the current pensioners. When you get to retirement then the working population then will be paying for yours.
This is why the State Pension Scheme does not work. Especially considering we have an aging population and a decreasing birth rate.
Sorry, I used to work in Pensions. That was one of the Big Myths that people still buy into.
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Date: 2004-02-20 09:02 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 09:08 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 09:11 am (UTC)Cos at least one of my work colleagues was surprised when I pointed this out to them...
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Date: 2004-02-20 11:54 am (UTC)One of the essential problems is that doctors are medically trained and, as such, have had little time to learn basic management (let alone admin.) principles. Doctors like to hang onto 'power' in a management sense but are too busy 'saving lives and stamping out disease' to engage in management issues to the extent that would allow things to be run sensibly. Because they feel that they should retain power over how things are run, this causes them to undermine management decisions taken by managers (who are usually paid a lot less than managers in the private sector and don't always have a good grasp of the 'front line' medical issues).
Then you get the internal politics. Which are incredibly filthy. An awful lot of Empire Building goes on, within departments, between departments and between directorates, as well as on the Trust vs. Trust level.
I've also worked in private hospitals. I don't think things work much better there. And, if I had the choice, I would rather be a patient in an NHS hospital. I have a lot of reasons for saying that. One of which is the experience my father had in a well-regarded private hospital where there were no medical staff on site for much of the time (because they were busily fulfilling their NHS contracts).
I don't know how you fix it. I wish I did.
Our CEO believes that the current government is in the process of deconstructing the NHS, whether by accident or by design. He gave a presentation on this (and its implications for our Trust) a couple of weeks ago. It was depressing. I found it depressing.
But then I freely admit to being a socialist and am fairly devoted to the idea of top quality healthcare, free at the point of need.
I Saw This And Thought Of You
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Date: 2004-02-25 08:02 pm (UTC)Bear in mind I can only speak for where I am...
Hunters are scum.
They ride roughshod over people's property.
A lot of them are, ironically, townies.
They serve NO pest control purpose.
They don't represent the majority of people living out here, but claim they do, which disgusts many of us.
They mix all sorts of other IMPORTANT issues up with hunting, which confuses matters like rural housing and public transport by mixing it up with killing animals.
Basically they're a bunch of braying sloanes on horseback whose conception of the country appears to be formed from a combination of reading Horse & Hound, summers in the south of france and an almost feudal-japan attitude to the 'peasantry'.
Gits.
G
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Date: 2004-02-26 01:37 am (UTC)As for pest control...well, the most effective form of pest control that the hunt used to perform was the hefty payments to local farmers to stop them going and gassing the foxes in their holes, which is precisely what they would have done otherwise, legality or not.
A hunter wants something to hunt, and killing every last damn one is the worst way to achieve that.
First point:
Date: 2004-02-20 11:04 am (UTC)Because some at least are hurting so badly that hurting other people on the way out seems entirely reasonable?
Because there are more crowds & more trains at rush hour, making it less likely that someone will be able to stop them in time?