Saturday 23 October 2010

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES?

Within days of George Osborne’s Emergency Budget (for that is what it was) problems are starting to become apparent.

Reductions in local authority spending mean that councils will be unable to provide services for the elderly and vulnerable coming out of hospital, in turn meaning that they will bed block. Nigel Edwards, the head of the NHS Confederation, said the pressure on beds could mean that hospitals would be unable to admit patients "who badly need care".

Of course Mr Edwards was doubtless talking about England, but as there is bound to be a consequential, I cannot imagine that the situation will be that different in Scotland, or Wales.

The very well off will be able to be discharged into private nursing homes but, as the cost of beds in such places is prohibitive, in some cases well over £1000 a week, and stays may need to be over several, possibly many weeks, this is out of reach of many people.

So although Mr Osborne’s well intended ring fencing of the NHS budget, was supposed to mean that we could expect no reduction in our health services, it is evident that, should a convalescent person be in a bed, that bed cannot be occupied by the next patient.

You have to wonder if these cuts were quite thought through.


16 comments:

  1. The one cut they could have made but didn't was international development, charity begins at home we could have prevented the defence cuts as well as funding the elderly easily with that money.

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  2. So we should take money from the poorest people on the planet to pay for Labour's incompetence? If it is wrong to punish the poorest in our own country, how much worse is it to punish those who would consider our poor unimaginably wealthy?

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  3. Charity begins at home, sod foreigners we have our own needy.

    That simple enough for you?

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  4. Tris

    Once again you are looking through the wrong prism
    Cleggys one only shows happy contented O.A.Ps cartwheeling their way back home from hospitals..

    and instead of carping on the sidelines (very snp) you could or should of in the spirit of the big society(your country needs you) offer to take in and care for any elderly person who is unable to be discharged.

    I my self would take them in but unfortunately my hovel fail the basic hygiene requirements...wee shame

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  5. quite man not so much a racist more a racist moron

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  6. What's so racist about wanting to see my own people not thrown out in the gutter Niko?

    International aid is something for the good times, not for when pensioners freeze to death in their homes in the UK.

    The only morons around here are politicians and socialists who deliberately wrecked the UK economy and left us with the situation Tris described.

    Socialism = morons = giving money to anyone but the people of the uk.

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  7. Trident, aid to support corrupt foreign Governments, regime change, selling weapons outwith our shores, susidising the nuclear industry, not tackling tax evasion and avoidance in a meaningful way, bailing out gambling investment banks, carry a knife go to gaol, are all supported by morons (if that is the term one wishes to use), I am sure there are many others.

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  8. I wonder how many care homes could have been built if we didn't have to cough up an extra £900m a year for the corrupt EU. Call me Dave says the 6% increase to the corrupt EU is 'outrageous' and that he will fight to stop it. The deluded fool seems to forget we're signed up to the Lisbon Treaty which means he can't stop the increase ( amended by Lisbon – Article 314.). Anyway how are the corrupt EU going to keep funding the brainwashing of university students without this money ? Or expand the corrupt EU foreign office ( 6,000 staff and lots of new embassies doesn't come cheap).

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  9. I agree QM. Quite why we are sending money to India and China when their economies are booming is beyond me.

    Oh ...wait a minute, no it's not. It's all tied in with Cameron being allowed to strut around like he mattered at the G8, membership of which requires a minimum % of GNP be spent on Foreign Aid. Rather than that fat useless tax dodger Mitchell trying to find some countries where they actually are starving or flooded or whatever, he just chucks the money at wherever we have traditionally sent money.

    That way he has more time to count his tax free profits from the BVI.

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  10. Holebender... But we don't send most of it to the poorest people on the planet...see above.

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  11. Basic hygiene requirements Niko? Don't make me laugh. Mrs Mixed pickle's garden is clean compared to the average ward in Ninewells!!

    I'd take some in (as part of my committment to Dave's Big Society, of course) but I already let out all the cupboards. It's amazing how many you can cram into a small space at £50 a week!

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  12. Well QM... there were the bankers too. We really ought not to forget them. And I don't think they are socialists.... No sir.

    But yes. As the Tories are going to end up with an awful lot of homeless, and an awful lot of crime, drunks, drug takers and millions and millions of unemployed, I suspect it's time to say tough to old Johnny Foreigner... Go ask China. It's got so much money it really hasn't a clue what to do with it.

    But wait, we'd only spend what we save on giving Prince Charles and Princess Parker Bowles another private jet for their travels so that they never have to come into contact even with first class people, never mind the rest.

    I'd rather give it to foreigners than them. Come to that I'd rather give it to rats in the sewers than them.

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  13. Aye CH. If someone could just get it into that idiot Cameron's head that we can't afford wars and WMDs. We can't afford to be America's best friend. We can't afford Diamond Jubilees and Olympics and all that garbage... and nor should we when we can't house our people and get work for them.

    It's a pity our London politicians find doing what they were elected to do so bloody boring that they are off running the rest of the world...

    And just look at how good they are at it.

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  14. Well I dunno what it is that the EU has... but we hear a lot from politicians about how they are going to sort the EU out. Tell them they should do things the British way. The right way.

    And they always come back not having sorted diddly.

    And we have the lowest standard of living in western Europe; the highest drug problem, the worst drink issues, the lowest benefits and pensions, the lowest educational achievements for ordinary schools, the biggest difference between rich and poor, the most teenage pregnancies...etc etc...

    And we are still in the EU after 10 years of Thatcher who hated them more than she hated socialism... and after 10 years of Blair who was desperately trying to be Mrs Thatcher (except he could't get eh hair right)...and who hated them more than he hated socialists.



    Why?



    ...

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  15. "Why?"

    Cowardice and treason as they take instructions from some distant 'daz washed hoose' as it suits them to have access to the EU without showing it to their own electorate in my opinion.

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  16. Yes of course. They'd never leave the EU. They just talk tough for home consuption.

    And of curse, no matter how many times the likes of the Blessed Margaret talked tough and then let them ride a coach and horses over her, the British people complained and moaned and tutted and then got on with the "Generation Game", and forgot all about it.

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