Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

i see ofcom has removed price controls on royal mail. looks like the fire sale has started.60p for a first class stamp..ohh yes privatisation works will create competition and cheaper prices .where have we heard that before.the railways,the water board,electricity,gas ,bt the list is endless.

re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Why start a new thread to tell us this...surely you could have put it in that other long running thread about the tories......or is no-one reading you anymore?

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

If this is going to be a Tory discussion I will move it to the thread Margaret mentioned, if its going to be about the Post Office I wont

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

just move it to the tory lol

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Well you were right there Margaret, the only ones reading the Tory thread now are C'mon and the Lush

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

He could have simply posted it in his other, very similar thread.

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f...age-58184.html

Or even added to this thread.

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f...res-37825.html

About the systematic closure of post offices...carried out under the last government's watch.

:rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Do you have a postal system, up there near your bothy?

I just thought you painted your arse with woad, and communicated with each other by lifting your kilts.

http://www.southwestbagpiper.co.uk/i...h%20smiley.gif

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

on the subject of royal mail last week it cost me £23 to post a small laptop recorded delivery but they wouldnt honour the insurance if they broke it because it contained glass yet still charged full whack for the cover

god knows how much it will cost now they can set whatever prices they want infact i can see it effecting people who use ebay quite a lot.Its ok for ebay shops they get a large discount on parcel deliveries from royal mail but the average home user who wants to get rid of a few items wont be able to compete because they cant match teh postage fees bigger sellers can.

i dont see how it is compltely the tories fault most post offices shut or were taken over privately under labour who incidently didnt do much to ensure protection from extortionate price hikes didnt happen.Labour could have placed further protection that would have prevented the tories doing what they have done so they are as bad as each other.

because of email royal mail only has parcel delivery to make real money from and with the amount of companies out there popping up hopefully the not so royal anymore mail will see the error in large price hikes or face going bust.

Mind you i think royal mail own amazon so if im correct they make commission on goods sold on tehir site and money from delivery of the items sold from their site

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

This statement is incorrect.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Recorded delivery is for proof of posting and obtaining a signature on delivery; it is not for insuring the value of the contents.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Just to make myself clear, I was referring to the statement that Royal Mail owns Amazon. Of course, Royal Mail makes money out of delivering Amazon's items.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Percentage wise, these are pretty massive price increases.

But when you think about it, it's still fairly good value for money.

Getting someone to hand deliver something, to the other side of the country, all for 60p.

Can't think of many other services that cost so little.

Certainly a plumber wouldn't get out of bed, and come on a call out, for a sixty pence fee.

When the postage stamp delivery service was introduced it cost a penny.

Though in 184O that could also buy you a bottle of gin, a good time girl, or a plate of whelks.

All of which cost a lot more than the price of a postage stamp today.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Giving away secrets again Rindi, didn't know you liked whelks:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

and while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. who is going to gain from this? yes thats right camerons mates .i wonder where and when he went to dinner with them ,paid by the taxpayer to give tax payers a raw deal.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Don't worry too much about it.

You can have your own mail system, once Scotland gains idependence.

You can combine your postal and your health services.

Old Bridie can carry any mail in the basket on the front of her bike, along with the battered Mars bars, and the bottle of Buckfast.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

It won't make that much difference to those wi no mates.:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

These days there is a massive drop in the amount of post sent by mail due to e-mail and so on, which is one reason for the price hike.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I very rarely use snail mail now, Used the use it a lot but everything is done on line these days, I pay every bill on line by DD or SO, and buy nearly everything on line by CC, haven't posted a letter this year yet

Post Office puts up the cost of the only service they have a monopoly in to remain competitive.
Competitive against whom?

They have been given a boost thanks to ebay and other online shopping services, now they wish to price themselves out of the market, (again).

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Bring back telegrams, stage coaches, or if it's very urgent, the pony express.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Johnny Johnson & his Bandwagon - Blame it on the pony express - YouTube

Ya then you could take a page out of Johnny's book Rindi:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

when you send something recorded delivery you get insurance included for teh item up to £40 i think it is and if your item is worth more you pay a little extra.This is why they ask you if teh item you are sending is ove rteh value of £40 so you can increase the insurance to cover loss or dammage done by royal mail;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

It's £46 but I only know because I googled it

Its Special Delivery if its worth more than that, its in this link http://www.postoffice.co.uk/letters-...ecial-delivery

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

i wonder which tory donor has set up their business to compete with the royal mail.this is probably the price they can make a big profit.the private firm;)

Don't wonder, google it, then copy & paste it on here like you usually do.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Heard on the radio at lunch time that if you go and buy stamps with just 1st or 2nd Class on them and no price that they will be able to be used when they go up in price.
Don't all STAMPede

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

im gonna grab some pigeons and feed them steroids so they can deliver future goods i sell on ebay :D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

i would like to think it would prevent all the junk mail through our letterboxes but these prices will only effect joe public because these large companies pay a 1 time fee and can send as much as they want as they get a massive discount from royal mail:rolleyes:

should they be allowed to call themselves royal mail anymore the only thing royal about them seems to be that they use a picture of teh queen on stamps?

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Thats always been the case, since they stopped putting the price on these stamps

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Make savings back, on food costs.

Lick your own stamps.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

your an idiot they are taking the pee out of people like you. you are nuts:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

There are a lot of people like me, about 14 million, enough to put a bigoted Scotsmen in their place every time, loser

Will you please stop coming on here just to insult & call yourself names?

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I tried that, these new fangled ones stick to your tongue :confused:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

You have to gently simmer the self-adhesive ones first, and then make a nourishing, and tasty jus with what's left in the pan, after you've first removed the stamps.

Also, used stamps make affordable little tattoos for children, if pasted to their skin with an adhesive made from any left-over flour, mixed with a little water.

Savings, savings, savings.

You can't lick 'em.

;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

jaysay you must be nuts if your saying this Goverment is doing a good job:D:D:D nuts o hazel nuts.

You are getting repetitive,

which is a shame, your imbecilic outcrys usually have a touch of the random to them.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

If there were anywhere near 14 million like you on Earth, human beings would be living in caves :)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Yeah, at least you had a bike, and tootled off on it, just as soon as Tebbit told you to.

http://emoticoner.com/files/emoticon...gif?1292867640

I knew there was at least one thing we had to thank the Tories for.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Yes, and it's a metaphorical 'bike'.

We all know you actually bought a one-way ticket on the National Express.

Boo-hoo.

http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-fc/yawn.gif

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Well yes.. but I never knew you were just around the corner.. touting expensive shirts to the rich and famous..it's a small world..in your mind.:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

When have I said the Government are doing a good job, the only thing I've ever said is they sure as hell are doing a better job than Labour, because by now if Labour were still running things this country we would be in total financial collapse, and the majority of the measures put in place by this Government would still have had to be addressed by Labour, you can't borrow your way out of debt, that was Labours recipe for disaster

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

but the tories are borrowing more and more;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Because the debt left my your mod, the interest on Labour debt alone is £45 billion per year and is rising

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

and borrowing.well lets see who buys all the shares when they float next year.at least 70% will be foreign shareholders,prices will rise tenfold like the utilities trains etc post offices will shut and franchises will open and shut in local supermarkets its a recipe for disaster.everything thats been great in britain has been systemically dismantled by the tories the nhs is next.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Your just like your football team third division in every respect

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Premier league
Championship
league 1
league 2

So accrington stanley would be fourth division :rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Well according to yer signature your the Stanleyfan, Jaysay aint.:D so what does that statement mean?

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Just informing him as he was using stanleys league as a slight insult to another member.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

If the members who i suspect many people insult him.:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

He wasn't talking about Stanley, who are actually Jaysay's second team. C'mon, despite, his user name is a Rangers fan who, as you doubtless know, are currently in the Scottish Third Division.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

yes it is when they insist you have insurance on your parcell

automatic included insurance in the posting price on items under the value of i think it is £40 and anything of value over that amount extra insurance has to be taken out.No cover extra or included will be honoured on glass items

but they will give you a free fragile sticker so it looks pretty when the sorting office slam it on the floor

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Well I stand corrected what a labyrinth that turns out to be.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

When C'mon was living down here, he was a regular at the Crown which is why he has that user name. Rangers have always been his first team.

Jaysay is a lifelong Rovers supporter, but has always had a soft spot for Stanley and made a donation to us in our hour of need.

Personally, I prefer people who have Stanley as their second team to the vast majority of Accrington football supporters who have no interest in their local club.

...and, believe me, if anyone disses our beloved club on here, I'm down on 'em like a ton of bricks! ;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Hey, Stanley are my second football team ... I bet I'm not the only Peel Park vet on here:D ... And my number one football team ... The Saskatchewan Roughriders:theband:, the Accrington Stanley of the Canadian Football League:D

By the way, is the Post Office really all that important any more?

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

C'mon is a Rangers fan, Rangers are in div. 3 of scotish football, will explain things better in future seeing some people are a tad slow on here;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

That would mean multi-tasking, stick to jaysayisms they are what you do best.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I knew you'd missed me Less:rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

the thing is...its not theres to sell off.in the first place!

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

dont forget more rises in april. with a new parcel being a packet to cost £5.00:eek::confused:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

if a 1st class stamp gets any more expensive im going to expect the queen her self to deliver it and not just donate her face to the stamp

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

And nothing went up when your shower were in power, well it did actually more than its doing now clown

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

On the subject of postal deliveries , mine has improved since the new system for delivery began a few weeks ago .

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

You don't mind paying a bit more if there is an improvement in the sevice, sadly that isn't always the case

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Ours has too.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Mine too, just had a parcel delivered and the posty brought it in for me now I can no longer go to the door, he was only too pleased to help

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

they have wasted billions on this already:eek: say goodbye to your daily post it will be 3 days a week to save money. another great British institution ruined by ideology and idiotism .

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Ya Labour have a lot to answer for haven't they. It might be better if you actually knew what your talking about before opening your stupid mouth, delivery, price's etc are governed by OFCOM, the fact is that by selling off the postal service raising around £3 billion, will enable money for investment that wasn't there as a state owned business, to make alterations of this magnitude money would have had to be diverted from other budgets such as the NHS or Education. Lets not forget that Labour, when in power, were all in favour of selling off the post office, never heard Jock Strap saying anything then.:p

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

your the idiot the truth hurts . 21,000 nurses have been made redundant in the last 2 years to pay for this. lets have a look what the tories have achieved. propaganda on the news every day telling us how bad the nhs is doing while they get rid of nurses and try and shut hospitals = fail beaten by the law. tough on immigration, sack half the people who try and stop illegal immigration and now immigration goes up = borrow less = fail universal credit = fail economy keep telling everybody everything is alright= fail unemployment try and take credit when its going down when actually its the students going back to further education and in real terms its up 10,000 =fail the bedroom tax which the united nations is discrediting =fail now lets see the mess they make of the royal mail... they are destroying everything that was good about Britain .

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Just remind me what was good about Britain?? it was goosed before Cameron, all he has done is make things worse.:rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

That's the biggest load of bollocks you've ever put on here, for a start the economy was a basket case (like it always is after a Labour government) now we are seeing the measure put in place are working, where you get this idea about 21,000 nurses made redundant, is cloud cuckoo land full, if not they should save a place for you. In 2010 there was absolutely nothing good about Britain after the Blair and Brown show, that's why they were kick out of office, and looking at the answer to the dynamic duo MR ED, god help use if he ever gets even close to downing street, come back Michael Foot (and donkey jacket) all is forgiven

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I do not recall you posting such figures about how badly the last incumbents were doing, while they were in power.......you are a one trick pony.......you cannot, or perhaps, will not see how the last labour government dismantled the culture of the UK....diluting it with mass immigration, which they knew would have catastrophic effects, but they didn't want us, the electorate to think that...they just kept banging on about multiculturalism...they forgot that we didn't have the infrastructure to cope with such volumes of incomers....well no they didn't forget...they just neglected to mention it.......voters could see it, but would those in power listen...NO, of course they wouldn't.

If by some mad chance a labour government had been elected last time, they would be doing the same things that this government is doing and I wonder what your reactions would have been then.......NO, I don't....we would have had complete silence from you.

The three parties are ALL THE SAME.........they do not care about what the electorate want...they just follow the directives of those unelected mandarins in Brussels.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

yes I did;) waiting lists were down. new hospitals etc does anybody remember before 1997 ? nobody can deny labour raised the standard of living. I did say mandelsons idea of privatizing the post office was plain wrong. hopefully the labour party have moved on. they are called one nation labour. there are already pressure groups in labour to re- nationalize when labour come back to power. its the only way to save money, to raise revenue for the tax payer.as always things go bad and they bring up immigration. immigration rose last year I don't see this all over the news.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I do not recall those posts. That is what I said......not that you didn't make them, but that I did not recall them.
Labour raised the standard of living......by borrowing money that they could not afford to pay back.

New Hospitals.....yes we got new hospitals alright, with PFI which means that the trusts will be paying off private companies for God knows how long, using maintenance staff at inflated rates.....budgets out of the window because labour gave us new hospitals bought with money that belonged to someone else..personally, I would have preferred to have soldiered on with the old one already paid for, and be able to pay for staff to care for patients.
Instead NEW labour put money into the pockets of the big companies - you know, those companies which you scathingly decry for making money for shareholders...capitalists.......those who only want to make a fast bag of money.....and we are paying
They borrowed money so that it looked like everything in the garden was rosy - all top show.
The Labour party are just a mauve shade of conservatives......and I can't see them getting back into government anytime soon...well, not on their own...they would have to be shackled to someone like Nick Clegg and his cohorts...which would seriously limit their ability to do much of what they want...........so you keep on dreaming.
Believing what you want to believe, it must give you great comfort.

Anyway, it won't matter to you when you are an independent nation.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

it all depends on the quality of the tender requirements document.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

The problem being Labour temporary raised the standard of living at the costs of billions of pounds of personal and government debt.
The standard has fallen dramatically as it was unsustainable and like all things, must be paid for.
Thus we have been through a long period of re-payment/recession.
When you consider how much Labour wasted in both financial and opportunity terms during their 13 years, I think history will show the Blair and Brown governments to be a colossus fail.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

C'mon is actually right here...he just argues it the wrong way. The Tories ARE screwing with the NHS, they are doing it like you or I would play a game of Jenga. They pull an innocuous piece out and five moves later the tower falls down.

Nurses ARE being canned, and it's being done very surreptitiously...they are being slowly replaced by healthcare workers, simply because they are cheaper to employ. Our own Flashy is a prime example, no disrespect intended here, but she has been taken off the street, put into a hospital situation, has a few days training and is already doing invasive therapy. Healthcare workers are what anyone over the age of 50 would call a 'nurse'. Healthcare workers are doing the job because they WANT TO HELP but are being used by the current government to supplant nurses.

Nurses have been forced to become little more than paper pushers, ticking boxes and doing constant training courses to maintain their credentials. They don't have time to change a bedpan, sit with an apprehensive pre-op patient or talk to a grieving relative, because they are too busy maintaining their continuous professional development, to satisfy the criteria of the Care Quality Commission. A lot of the young kids who have gone into nursing over the past few years have done so via university, they've done the theory but will never have an understanding of the practical, because they will be stood at a nurse station giving orders to people like Flashy and signing a form saying that they told her to do it.

I'm guessing that you went into nursing as a calling, because you wanted to be at the front end, helping and caring for people. That's what healthcare workers do nowadays. Nurses go to university for 3 years, come out and think the bloke in the end bed is a cantankerous, foul mouthed pain in the backside..the healthcare worker KNOWS he's scared and lashing out.

I want nursing by someone like Flashy, not a university graduate.

Don't get blinded and side tracked by the screw ups of Blair/Brown and the incoherence of C'mon. the NHS is in real danger from the current crop.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I`d like to correct you on a couple of things guiness, firstly, Flashy will have at least an NVQ2 to get the job she did, so not exactly unqualified, and will probably go on to do her NVQ3 if she doesn`t already have it.
Secondly, HCA`s don`t replace nurses, although there are a few duties they may have taken on that nurses would have done previously, HCA`s are what used to be called Auxilary Nurses, changing beds, bed baths, fetching notes for doctors etc.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Different awarding bodies had differing criteria for awarding the NVQ qualification, for example one body required the candidate to answer multi choice questions whilst another required essays and on the job observations. The optional units completed in the NVQ may not even be relevant units for hospital work. Nobody is going on to do their NVQ3, it's been replaced by the much better and more intense QCF which has appropriate bolt-on units required by the job role.

I know what the role of the healthcare worker is, and yes, you can kinda equate them to the old auxiliary, but as you say they are required to do more than the auxiliary ever did, the lines are being blurred. What is in effect happening is that nurses are becoming low paid doctors and healthcare workers are becoming low paid nurses.

I'm not denigrating healthcare workers, as I said, they are the ones I want looking after me. I'm saying that its they who are the backbone of the NHS not nurses, and when people bang on about nurses being underpaid and doing long hours, its actually the healthcare workers that are bearing the brunt. And, because to them, it's a calling, they just get their heads down and quietly get on with it.

The government is in a win-win situation, they get nursing care on the cheap and then the CQC do their inspections, write damning reports on hospitals and get them closed down or amalgamated, giving them ammunition to push for private health care

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Not exactly taken from the street and given a few days training was my point and the extra duties given to HCA`s, from what what I can tell, are things that you wouldn`t expect to need a nursing degree for. taking blood pressure, blood samples etc. freeing up nurses to do more important things and not be rushed off there feet like in the past.
Not when they get home they don`t.:D

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

the pfi was put in law by john major I do admit labour should have changed it.. but that was the last government the way is forward with a new direction.. firstly re-nationalize the railways..

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

you wont see this in the news pickle in a pickle Eric Pickles costs taxpayers £90,000 in attack on union - Media centre - PCS

Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Excuse me? We won't see it? Haven't you just pasted it?

£90,000, well, I suspect that is nothing compared with what they are prepared to pay just to keep in power.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I can guarantee one thing that if the people of this country are conned into electing another profligate Labour Government, they will not re-nationalize the railways, just as they didn't renationalise gas or electricity, mainly because they know just how unpopular it would be, but this isn't really the problem with Labour, they just can't make an economic success of running the country, they always leave a disaster behind them every time they kicked out on their ear, in 1997 they inherited the best financial outlook of any incoming government in history yet left it an utter unmitigated disaster

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

But they didn't ...they followed what was a tory based principle...as I said Labour are not red...they are mauve!

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I have been at the sharp end of nursing for more years that I care to remember...and though I am now retired, I still have friends who were my colleagues. I know exactly what they do......they work their socks off to try to ensure that standards are maintained.
Nurses aren't just ticking boxes and pushing paperwork(yes they do fill in paperwork) - much of it is done at the end of the shift, when the nurse has made sure her patients have had the care that has been prescibed for them.
I have also spent a lot of time this year seeing my daughter be cared for...in intensive care and on the wards and in follow up clinics.
The nurses have many more technical skills...they insert cannula's, some even do operative procedures... they do jobs that were once the domain of the Doctor......the roles of the doctor and nurse are becoming ever more blurred...there are nurses who are clerking patients in at pre-op clinics, and prescribing drugs...but there are still nurses who will do a bedbath and help a patient who has toilet needs.
I am telling you what I have seen in the last few months...not what I have read about, or had the media serve me up.

The NHS is under extreme pressure for many reasons...not least of which is the vast numbers of people who have come into this country and expect to have their health care needs(which they would have to have paid for in their own country) met.

The PFI means that ever increasing amounts of the budget available for healthcare is being spent on paying back Balfour Beattie......if you want a light bulb changing, you can no longer ring the electricians department and get this done cheaply, it has to be done (at exorbitant cost) by Balfour Beattie's maintenance.

I don't care who brought the idea of PFI in.....Labour were in power long enough to make changes...and surely they could see that it was going to be detrimental on cost alone...but they did nothing.
If you can see something is wrong, but do nothing about it then you are culpable in much the same way as if you had done it yourself.

If you are unlucky enough to need nursing care of any description in the future...you might just be surprised at what those who have a university qualification do for their wage..and you might just be gratful for what they do!

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Margaret, in the main I think you are agreeing with me. I already pointed out that nurses are not doing the job that they are supposed to, they are doing more, they are doing the job of doctors and being paid nurses wages. The people who are doing the dictionary definition and traditional Florence Nightingale nursing are healthcare workers and they are being paid just above minimum wage. Trust me I am very grateful that ALL of these guys are around.

The point of contention between us is the amount of hands on basic nursing that university qualified nurses do. Like you I speak from personal observation not from political propaganda or watching Casualty. I don't for one moment think that nurses are useless, I just think that their role has been changed from the traditional hand holding, brow wiping and pillow pumping reassurance to triage, prescribing and having to maintain continuous professional development by going on countless training courses instead of being observationally assessed by the matron on a daily basis.

These changes have been made by the constant interference of government to get healthcare on the cheap and pave the way for private healthcare.

And once the NHS implodes, we will have a glut of university trained nurses who will be scrambling for jobs in the private sector driving down the wages on offer as supply exceeds demand. Like I said, win-win for this government.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

I don`t know where you get your info Guiness, or what your definition of "just above" is, but HCA`s, depending on there pay grade obviously, are on way more than minimum wage.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Hmm....ok around £45 for a 37 hour week before tax above minimum wage, and for nurses £150 for 37 hour week before tax above minimum...bloody pedants ;)

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

By the way, if the NHS really want to save money on nurses, they should employ more of them. That way, they wouldn`t have to use agency nurses so much at £28/hour.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

So HCA`s are on just over £1/hour above minimum wage, my Mrs must be a fully qualified nurse then, never noticed her going to uni.:rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Absolutely spot on, just think that £28 is a little lite, last year I was on 3 different wards and I bumped into one nurse on all three wards:rolleyes:

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Of course nursing has evolved...it has been evolving since the days of Florence Nightingale....it has had to do this to keep up with modern technology processes and procedures.

And the university qualified nurses DO still participate in hands on care hands on care...but they have HCA's to help them do this.
It is a case of getting the work done as a team.
When my daughter was in hospital for five weeks earlier this year, her care was delivered by caring individuals who did what was necessary to make her comfortable...whether that was to empty her catheter bag, administer pain relief, or change her vomit bowl and give her a mouthwash. I saw the ward sister do this on more than one occasion.

If you do not have a doctor available and a patient needs an IV line re-siting, what would you rather have?
A nurse who is qualified to do this - and get on with it...or wait and let the patient become dehydrated because it does not fit with the traditional brow mopping vision of a nurse?

Nurses have long wanted to do these roles because they are on the spot when frequently a doctor is not....and they know it benefits the patient.
I did not go into nursing because of the pay...in fact I left a very well paid job in industry to go and follow my dream.

I cannot generalise why nurses go into nursing today...but the ones that I know go i nto it to make a difference to the lives of patients.
Nursing has changed...it is going to continue to change, this change cannot be stopped.
Nurses work as a team, with the HCA making a valuable contribution to the care of patients...this is good for the HCA and also for the patient.
Some of the finest lessons I learned were from auxiliary nurses - those untrained precursors of the HCA...and at last someone has recognised their value and given them training to do other things than wipe bottoms and do baths

As for your comment on CPD(continued professional development) this doesn't have to done by taking courses....you can do it at the place of work and by studying stuff that the professional journals provide.

British trained nurses are welcomed with open arms all over the world.
I cannot ever see there being a glut of trained nurses.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

That is spot on...except the hospital pays more for an agency nurse that the figure you have quoted.
Whe I was senior sister of my unit, I would juggle staff around rather than having to bring in agency nurses - nurses who didn't know either the patients or the layout of the ward...and who you used to have to spend more time wet nursing, than letting them do the job they were being paid to do.
More nurses on the wards would mean the deployment of staff who actually know the patients would be possible .......and it would save shedloads of money!

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Margaret, 2 things in life I don,t like. 1 is Bad ale. and 2 some of the Clowns on here who can do nothing but cut and paste. One thing that I do like though are people like you who talk sense and can back up whatever they say due to experiences in life and profession. I have to say that every experience that I have ever had in the hospitals in this great country of mine have always been very good apart from the last one. If it wasn't for some of the members of your profession, I would not be writing this now. You are 100% right with what you say regarding nurses and agency staff. I have just had an operation in the William Harvey Hospital in Kent. Not one English Doctor or Surgeon did I see in the 3 days I was there. Only 2 English nurses were available to cover 3 interconnecting wards with a total of 24 patients. Everybody else, foreigners. From the Agency nurses to the tea and dinner ladies to the ward cleaners. The recognised spoken language for the wards apart from the 2 English nurses was East European. Whatever happened to Matron.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Mog, thank you for your vote of confidence.
I am no longer in the profession, having retired quite a while ago.
The Matron thing gets my goat too.....once upon a day, a very long time ago...the Matron was the figurehead of the hospital...she said 'jump' and not only did you jump, but you asked 'how high and how long do you want me to stay up??'
Matrons were long gone when I did my training and had been replaced by Nursing Officers......just another layer of management....which could be done away with(although my Nursing Officer - a Mr John Whalley, was noted for scrubbing up and assisting in gynae theatre...and turning his hand to portering duties too)
The matrons who are dotted about the hospitals today are much like these Nursing Officers, and were a sop to public concerns about the way the NHS was going...a political Google Page Ranking stunt.
Politicians aren't much good at running the country(unless you call running it into the ground 'running').
If they left the running of the NHS in the hands of those who know best how to do this, then things would be far better.......The NHS is like a vast ship...it takes a long time to stop it in it's tracks and turning it round after it has been steered in the wrong direction is a feat in itself.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

You`re right Margaret, the £28 is what the nurse is paid (or so i`ver been told), the agency will also get paid, so I would guess it will cost the NHS more like £40-£50 per hour.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Doesn`t necessarily mean they were agency, staff get moved around quite regularly, my mrs often works in different departments and sometimes even different hospitals, and then there are bank shifts as well.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Many people who start out as HCA's go on to become qualified nurses.
The NHS has a duty to maximise the potential of every member of staff(that is what a big part of appraisal is about). In this way the member of staff benefits because they are allowed to develop and grow...the patient benefits from people who have skills that are needed in a health care setting.......and the NHS gets the best from the people who work within it...now, if only the government would stop its meddling, it would be a better organisation by far.

Re: Post Office Sell Off - Welcome To Tory Britain
 

Certainly agree with most of what you say mog, but circumstances change with different hospitals. Like you I have been treated on a few occasions and in 7 different hospitals, but there is always one constant, nursing, only ever come across two nurses who were useless, which is a very low percentage over 34 years