[lettie]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

No change there then. It has always been this way. Doesn't matter who is in power.
It is worse when you get asked and your opinions are ignored.

That's the thing.... Not only do we rarely get asked our opinion, but when we do, it is completely ignored. This is not just at Government level but also at local level.

The fact is that we cannot afford the NHS, it is a bottomless pit. As science moves on and new procedures come to the fore, the NHS starts to provide them. In it's inception it was a lifesaving service providing emergency care to those in dire need. Now it is all things to all men with a population whose expectations of the service increase with every new procedure. Something, somewhere, has to give but..........here's the thing. A Government who privatises the NHS will be unpopular with the voting public and will therefore lose votes. So successive Governments have picked away at the NHS, privatising services such as Domestics, Laundry, Pharmacy, Procurement, Buildings and building services (PFI), Portering, Transport etc. All the while swearing blind that they are not privatising the NHS. The NHS will be privatised by stealth, each government picking away at it until there is nothing left.

The changes that successive Governments bring in, bring more managers but these managers have no real power. More documentation, tick boxes and people who trained bloody hard to provide care but are spending most of their working day pen pushing. It doesn't matter that the patient complains of not getting any care because..... this tick box says that they did.... and the target was met.

I am absolutely against these changes but as my opinion won't be asked (due to the fact that it just won't be, and also that I 'let fly' on the last questionnaire that I was sent ) I will wait with bated breath for the outcome of this Bill and hope to God that I get 6 numbers in the meantime..