As someone who phoned the doctors this morning about medication, I am intrigued to know how I managed to get from 27th in the queue, to 6th, within 4 minutes? Did other callers all hang up at the same time, or have the surgery got a crack team of receptionists in there whizzing efficiently through calls? 
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Makes one wonder how many decided to phone 999 instead.
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That wouldn’t help unless you had something life threatening, I waited 6 hours, before cancelling an ambulance and then again if it is not life threatening you can have a 12 hour wait in the corridor of the A&E department.
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that pictures takes me back. I used to be a telephonist using one of those switchboards. When I look back I realise I did well working one of those, not sure I could remember what slot to put what patch cord in nowadays lol there were tons of lines!
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Don’t try and bamboozle us with your technical jargon. 
ah it was fun working the PSTN 
@Melgal70 , You may have something there Melgal, but l think that the
cause of population rise should be taken into account?
For instance, did the rise take place slowly due to natural causes in the
indigenous population? Or did it take place rapidly due to large influxes
of migrants etc ? If it is the latter then it is likely that infrastructure and
expansion of training facilities will lag behind the population growth, leading
to shortages and taking short cuts within existing facilities, which is where
we seem to be at the present moment ??
Donkeyman! 
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Ha ha yesterday I read an article on the phone service switch over which mentioned the Public switched telephone network (pstn) and Voice over internet protocol (voip) so there. 
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Haven’t found any data with historic patients per GP linked to population growth yet, but in the meantime:
One can imagine that things have worsened since then.
The worlds population has increased massively because improvements in health, food production, medical practices etc etc. Whereas immigration might well put a stran on certain services in this country you have to look at the lack of forward planning by successive governments who have always pretty much buried their collective heads in the sand.
The NHS has been broken for many years and COVID has really kicked it in the teeth and what has government done zilch but throw money at the problem, add red tape. You in England you are told that the NI rise will fund bringing down the backlog and waiting time figures but how is it actually going to do that, there is not the staff now and there won’t be in the future.
So people will die in greater numbers and for reasons that they really shouldn’t the government has proved that it will sacrifice the elderly and the vulnerable during the COVID pandemic by dumping untested people into care homes to clear beds in hospitals.
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DM, In this part of the World, nearly all of the Practice Doctors are incomers…!
How does that fit with your theory?
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What’s the point? It takes no more than a couple of minutes to draw some blood. You are correct to refuse.
I agree. Unless you are at death’s door, you wait and wait and wait (in the waiting room of course). After I had had my fifth ‘fit’, Marge insisted I went to A&E. We sat waiting for over 8 hours and, of course, the waiting room was full.
Not good when it turns out that during that ‘fit’ my heart could have actually stopped for several seconds, as was later discovered. Having said that, hopefully if I had keeled over on to the floor someone might have come over to see if I was OK(?).
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In my considered opinion this is the real cause, but we’re not allowed to say it!
If one had a very cynical mind then one might wonder about the apparent slowness in allowing the influx of Ukranian refugees.
I suspect that your chair would be nicked first. 
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@MrFraggle67 , A good post MrF, l agree with most of it, just a couple of
points l would like to bring up?
You seem to think government’s should embrace forward planning, but our
system is geared to short terms of office for government’s, so we keep
alternating between ntwo systems, each system undoing any good that the
previous system may have created ?
You also blame government for placing untested aged people into care
homes to clear hospital beds , l am not sure this is true, aren’t the NHS Trusts
responsible for the management of hospital beds?
IMO, we are witnessing the end of the NHS as we knew it, l think the staff
themselves are driving it towards becoming almost fully private again ?
UK itself is now on a steep downward decline it can no longer resist by
more borrowing as we are all borrowed out? This will impinge on the
Banks eventually ,( who normally thrive in a high debt situation !) due to our
population having nothing to use as collateral anymore!!
We allready have food banks and charities doing what government’s should
should be doing, people are living on the streets in greater numbers !
Meanwhile Bankers are writing their own bonus cheques !!
We will soon be eating in communal canteens and sleeping in anoraks ,
probably as soon as this coming winter ??
Donkeyman!
Then we must agree to disagree on this for the simple reason the head of NHS England would not have taken this unprecedented step without consulting the Health secretary. And of course we were then treated to constantly changing reasons why this decision was reached during question time in the house and ministers answering questions on TV political programs.
Are you saying that the government should only plan ahead 5 years because that maybe the only time they have in office, absolute rubbish they should be planning decades ahead not a few years.
This lot have trouble planning ahead a few months.
@Tedc, It fits perfectly Ted, the excess of immigrants is the reason that
they are so visible ! Especially in government bodies and banks where
pe rformance can’t be measured and conditions and pensions are above
average ?
Donkeyman! 
@MrFraggle67 , No, l am saying that is why they “don’t” forward plan ?
I actually agree we should forward plan, in fact l think every 20yrs or so we
should have a national debate about what needs to be done in the next
20 yrs ,any government change would have to comply with what was
nationally agreed previously?
So, every 20 yrs, a national debate,
Every 5yrs election,
And so on etc etc?
Donkeyman! 