h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Morning all,

No, I honestly dont mind - But what I do object to is the political assumption that throwing increasing billions of £'s at various problems will produce a solution.

It will not, of itself.

What we need to see is a determination to grasp the netle and look at how to make practice ( in government and out ) more "efficient".

The NAO's report today on the CPA is a perfect illustration. When things go wrong there is a tendancy with politicians to dig into the Treasury Pocket , as if that will solve things. What is needed is a "Back to the drawing board" approach.

Otherwise, those of us who help to fill the Treasure Chest are going to become irritated ,

"The NAO's report today on the CPA is a perfect illustration."

This is all just so much alphabet soup without some sort of link.

National Audit Office

Child Protection Agency

Am I close?

Morning Clive,

Yes, sorry, too much 'medecine' last evening!

Novo

Apologies Bouncy,

Will this do?

<>

Though I was trying to keep it a 'general' observation.

Novo

Should that be the CSA?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5130206.stm

The NHS works, well as far as Ive seen it does.

Ive had lots of broken bits, sometimes when its been ribs or toes they just say "do you want some pain-killers?, bye bye then"

I dont get on my high horse and moan about standards of care. Now admittedly the odd gash or broken limb is a whole lot different to a continual mental health problem or breast cancer, Id like a lot more care if I turned up with those, but where do we draw the line? Just what do we expect from the government?

I think we we have moved on from thinking "we've never had it so good" to bveing a nation of Veruca Salts "We want it now"!

All the demands we make and having worked in a housing department Ive sse a fair few are stretch a system that does not have infinite resources and that is expensive to administer.

The biggest problem as far as I see it is not the sytem, or rather all the little systems run by the goverment, it self it is more to do with unrealistic expectations.

Yes more of our expectations would be met if it werent for some of the systems being grossly ineficient, but that is the symtom and not the problem. The real problem is at the top with cronyism and payola. Political manouvering has mucked up defence procurement, the NHS, the CSA you name it. Yet the people at the top only get changed for another lot who do the same if their is enough of a vote swing at an election.

Labour have become just a sleazy and have their noses in the trough just as much as Thatchers privatisers ever did.

Ultimately we are to blame for not wanting to pay higher taxes. UK citizens voted for a government and end enjoyed the windfall from privatisations now the coffers are running dry and we are still voting for a governmnet who is "balancing" the books with PFI money we will have to payback and more for for years to come. I only see things getting worse unfortunately.

one love

Gosh Blicky,

That's unusually 'Bleak' for you!- probably realistic though.

I honestly don't mind paying taxes, and overall aren't we one of the more highly taxed populations?

What I was getting at, and what gets me really cross is the current tendancy, particularly with TB and cronies, when the pressure builds up, to announce that MORE MONEY is to be spent on X or Y or Z, as if this were the solution.

Clearly there is underfunding, and clearly ( as you say ) expectations are great - probably too great to sustain. But I just wish to hell that someone, somewhere, or a 'new' party , or any mortal thing would attack the real problems and clear out the Augean Stables and introduce some cost saving and effeciency into the system.

It is the auto response of "We Will Spend More" that winds me up. Wrong end of the telescope!

Novo

Hi Blicky,

Perhaps this indictes the start of 'the answer'?

<< http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5132464.stm >>

Novo

So you think that private firms "advising" PCTs will mean savings that will be ploughed back into patient care or mean that the savinged will be diverted to other public services or even materialise as tax cuts?

Will these companies dolling out advice be doing it for free? Or wi;ll they be charging for telling health care managers how to mangae health care. It does not sound like any sort of answer to me unless the question is:

How can we divert more public money directly into the hands of private companies?

It goes without saying that any comanies that are chose to get money from the public purse will not be making any loans or donations to political parties whose members are responsible for giving out said public money. Nor will any of these companies be employing politicians or ex-senior civil servants after they have been granted huge contracts by the same politicians and civil servants. And if you'd be a liar and a communist to suggest it does.

I think it depends really. With the NHS, there are always pretty clear ways to use extra cash. You can buy expensive medicines that might otherwise have been out of the NHS' reach, you can invest in better machinery, in new buildings, can hire more staff so that the existing are not tired and overworked.

The child support agency, however, has got one job to do, and apparantly isn't doing it. If the rates of 30% efficiency is correct, they probably would do better selling off difficult to collect credit to loan companies.

I wonder if we need to encourage a different attitude to public services like the NHS. We have the patient's charter about waiting times & so on, but what about the patient's responsibility to turn up for appointments, return loaned equipment & so on?

Perhaps some private business input may irradicate some of the inefficiencies in the NHS, though I'd hate to lose sight of the ethos of caring for all.

The government seeks to manage the NHS as a single unified 'whole' - it isn't one, its lots of diverse sections.

The CPS is another thing that, to an outsider, looks simple, however things like the data protection law, over-zealously applied, make the actual implementation difficult. Also using a mathematical formula to assess a human situation is bound to throw up anomalies and problems.

That said a central population database, like the ID register, would make the CPS's job much simpler, however quite frankly the IT management skills of the current team are so bad, I wouldn't trust them to implement it.

Afternoon all

The crux of my arguemnet is that if the CPS or come to that the NHS were private companies in which 'we' were the shareholders 'we' would be able to go to AGM's, vote out directors etc.

Private Ltd Companies are very far from perfect - though they already do a significant amount of tax collecting etc on the Govts' behalf - I simply believe that in both quoted cases. and many others, a business, run for profit , not a loss requiring yet more cash , would me more efficient.

Noovo

Yeah just like on the railways....oh no hang on the various privat companies who are currently paying out dividens are still asking for tax handouts to subsidise runnning and improvements.

Ok some of the private companies have failed but there are some sucess stories what about privatised water companies?

Maybe not well privateised prisons there are no problems in those...well mostly because all the "problems" have escaped.

Hi Blicky

I new 'someone' would pick the railways! but it isn't a fair example is it , since Railtrack own the lines, bridges, tunnels stations, and the 'operating companies' have to lease their rolling stock from approved suppliers. Not quite your normal private company operation?

Novo

OK then Nuclear power?

Water?

Power companies?

I think the only real area of sucess was the telcoms sell-off but the benefits could have been acheived witha partial sell offf and de-regulation.

The hospital where i work is a foundation trust - patients & staff are members of the trust, with elected representatives.

I don't think that share holders of private companies who are 'the man in the street' usually have any realistic power.

BT were promising we'd all have fibre optic cable direct to our houses by now before they went private, now that would have been telecoms success.

Business, well business is most often the most efficient way of making a profit, but whether that makes it efficient in the interests of society depends on the situation. Sometimes it means huge amounts of resources are wasted on advertising for example.

I would be wary of privatising the NHS for a couple of reasons. Firstly the empirical, i.e. that medical care in the US is private, and is comparatively inefficient. They end up spending more money than us and appear to get a slightly worse result overall (and we can't even put that down to eating habits anymore).

Secondly, it means supply would be driven by consumer demand, whereas currently it done by a statistical cost/benefit analysis. This change would likely lead to most of the money going disproportionately towards well known diseases (money spent on viagra and baldness cures anyone?).

Novo, I worried that many people in a pinch or on a whim would sell their stock shares, and then the voting rights would become concentrated in a few hands.

Maybe you just need a direct election of the head of NHS? Or maybe you need to probe your political parties as to who will be running NHS, make that a campaign issue *every* year?