Power to Mick Lynch

Doobedoo said:
Millions of small violins are playing the sweetest of songs. C’mon if you’re earning that much then you have broader shoulders. Some people have to worry about how to heat and eat, not how to avoid them paying excess tax above 100k.
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Lots of this is because they don't worry though, people who are bad at managing money are often bad at managing health, relationships etc.. basic budgeting goes out of the window.

See what happens with various lottery winners even, no matter how much money you throw at some people they'll still find a way to screw things up.
 
dowie said:
Lots of this is because they don't worry though, people who are bad at managing money are often bad at managing health, relationships etc.. basic budgeting goes out of the window.

See what happens with various lottery winners even, no matter how much money you throw at some people they'll still find a way to screw things up.
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The NHS for example, a bottomless money pit run by vociferous charlatans
 
I mean, hes not wrong about the NHS. You could double its budget and it would simply gobble it all up and ask for more. All that would happen is that the standard of care would increase a bit and we would be able to afford better stuff to keep people alive longer at vast expense. The NHS needs a fundamental rethink in the way that it works and is structured.

Its quite shocking how its run considering its size and the number of people it employs.
 
fez said:
I mean, hes not wrong about the NHS.
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I thought the data showed if anything, the NHS was very efficient running on the budget it has compared to other first world systems? It's not very good on outcomes, but I'm not sure profligate waste for an organisation its size is one of its issues.

fez said:
You could double its budget and it would simply gobble it all up and ask for more.
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Well, we do spend some of the lowest per capita in the first world on our healthcare system, probably a contributing reason why the outcomes are so bad. Not necessarily a doubling of the budget, but it could probably do with some more to improve outcomes, which should be the main performance indicator!
fez said:
All that would happen is that the standard of care would increase a bit and we would be able to afford better stuff to keep people alive longer at vast expense.
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A bit hyperbolic and definitely framed in a pejorative way, but modern healthcare is expensive and yes, keeping people alive longer is the aim ;)

fez said:
The NHS needs a fundamental rethink in the way that it works and is structured.
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Yea, probably. I mean, there's lots of other hybrid systems out there that use a public/private partnership, that aren't the bat**** crazy US system that have much better outcomes than the NHS
fez said:
Its quite shocking how its run considering its size and the number of people it employs.
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Again, administratively, it's supposed to be very efficient compared to other systems, so that always seems like a distraction to me.
 
Freakbro said:
A bit hyperbolic and definitely framed in a pejorative way, but modern healthcare is expensive and yes, keeping people alive longer is the aim ;)
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My point here is that people have no idea how much medical care actually costs and the available drugs that we don't use because they are mind-numbingly expensive or don't offer a reasonable cost to outcome ratio. If we had way more money, that needle would probably swing somewhat.

All my views are from living with someone who is reasonably high up in the NHS management structure. I don't know how much of the NHS problems exist in a lot of well run private companies.

Where are you getting your information on the NHS from by the way. Its an interesting subject for sure as its very hard to compare across different countries with any accuracy due to the differences in population and their treatment requirements.

The NHS does some things very well but fundamentally people in the UK are unhealthy and feel entitled to the best medical care possible. This is very expensive and unsustainable as the population ages. If only people knew how little they had put into the system and how much they have taken out they might be a little more appreciative of it.
 
fez said:
Where are you getting your information on the NHS from by the way.
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Just the discussions on here over the years, reading all the arguments and counter arguments with linked reports at the time. The problem with the NHS is it's treated like a sacred cow in this country, where it should be immune to criticism, obviously it shouldn't. Hence why it always tops the charts in 'customer satisfaction', which is a pretty useless metric when compared to clinical outcomes! But I do think it get's a lot of unwarranted stick from people as well.

Dolph has put forward lots of good reasoned arguments against the current status of the NHS and how things could be improved and has changed my mind over time to a better public/private partnership model. I just don't have much faith we (especially under a Tory Govt) would implement a system that actually improves it!

fez said:
Its an interesting subject for sure as its very hard to compare across different countries with any accuracy due to the differences in population and their treatment requirements.
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Absolutely and so many different criteria to judge it all.
fez said:
The NHS does some things very well but fundamentally people in the UK are unhealthy and feel entitled to the best medical care possible. This is very expensive and unsustainable as the population ages. If only people knew how little they had put into the system and how much they have taken out they might be a little more appreciative of it.
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Don't disagree there.

200sols said:
At any cost it seems. We should focus on quality of life as well as quantity of life. Sadly the balance usually swings towards the latter and people often end up languishing in care homes in later life.
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For sure, we wouldn't keep pets alive in the state we keep some people, because it would be inhumane >.<
 
Minusorange said:

This hasn't gone down well, people asking how they can be giving £400mil to shareholders while losing £1mil a day and refusing to do better than 2% payrise
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A microcosm of Tory Britain.

Take a public service. Privatise it. Private entity begins siphoning as much money out of the business as possible at the expense of workers and quality of service.

A general strike can't come soon enough...it's the only thing that'll get rid of these parasites.
 
The idea that the service that the government uses to inform it's citizens of important things, and requires them to use for basic access to governmental services should be profit making is in itself absurd.
It should be run to try and break even, but it's a vital thing that they've gutted by allowing all the profitable parts* that used to subsidise the "service" parts to be hived off to their buddies.

I remember when we used to get two deliveries before noon, for the last 3 or 4 years (possibly longer) since they decided to get it ready for, and privatise it, our deliveries are hitting 2-3pm on a regular basis and with no normal, routine time for it (we used to know it would arrive in a rough 1 hour window if it was the normal postie).
A few years ago I was talking to our then "regular" postie and he was commenting on how he expected the proposed (now active) changes to mess up the service as the plan was something along the lines of get rid of a bunch of the posties, split something like 1 in 4 routes up so that the remaining posties were now to do an extra 25% of the route because "letter numbers have dropped" (which ignored the increase in small packets that took longer to deliver), and change the routes more often/relying more on temps (both of which meant it took longer).

How any company can plead poverty and that it's making a loss whilst paying out more than that "loss" to it's shareholders is beyond me.


*IIRC other companies can now do bulk collection, bulk sorting and then dump it on RM at what is in reality below cost for the final mile as RM's final mile cost was based on an average and often offset by the profits from bulk collection/sorting.
 
Interesting to learn that revenue strikes are banned which has led to these more disruptive strikes, and the government especially Truss is painting these guys all as evil interrupting everyone's ability to go to work.

Its as if there is no responsibility born on he executives of the railways and previous government who banned less disruptive strikes.

 
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