The Nightingale hospital were an expensive con on the public as they were never going to have the staff to man them in any meaningful way.
The government spent billions one way or another during the pandemic but wasted billions also.
The Nightingale hospitals.
PPE, hundreds of millions was spent on PPE that they could not use and that is apart from all the fast tracked dodgy deals.
Track and Trace which Johnson repeatedly said would world beating has probably cost nearly 40 billion pounds.
Not a hope in hell of anyone being held responsible of course.
I tend to agree but it was yet another situation where the government (and any government would have faced the same problems) couldn’t win no matter what they did.
They’re castigated for putting the Nightingales in place but if they had filled with those needing treatment they would be pilloried for not having enough staff or not having enough equipment or for allowing so many people to get ill.
Looking at things in hindsight allows plenty of scope for complaining.
Nothing whatsoever to do with hindsight the health secretary was told that there would not be the staff for the Nightingale hospitals before the first was ever built but he chose to ignore the Royal College of Nursing and go ahead any as the government wanted to be seen to be doing something.
The Louisa Jordan hospital in Scotland did not admit a single patient.
Scotland’s NHS is devolved and is the responsibility of Scotland so you’ve inadvertantly highlighted that it’s a cross-border problem and thus as I suggested, an impossible situation for any government
The London Nightingale hospital was opened by Prince Charles however, it only ever treated 54 patients and was derided by some in the NHS as a costly gimmick, but hey to us gullible plebs the government was doing something.
Well to be honest, that came as a pleasant surprise because I had thought that none of them had actually admitted any patients!
I suppose it might have been a good idea to set up regional hospitals where Covid patients could be treated in isolation from everyone else, but surely the government must have considered costs and availability of staff. Actually, costs wouldn’t have even been given a thought: just throw lots of money at them and hope for the best!
It does not seem to have worked out that way. Plus there seems to be a shortage of medics. The doctors aren’t machines and make their own decision on where they want to work. There just aren’t enough doctors and nurses in the UK.
I am getting a little tired of politicians in the UK and in particular Scotland where I live really underplaying how serious the backlog of patients waiting for elective surgery or treatment for other serious medical conditions because we still have a COVID health service rather than a NHS.
From a personal point of view I have had two surgeries postponed indefinitely and come Tuesday it will probably be confirmed I have a very serious condition with no clear idea on if treatment will be delayed.
We were told that the vaccine would be the solution but this is proving not to be the case with hospital admissions and deaths rising almost daily. People may not be as ill because of the vaccine but every COVID hospital admission is one less patient needing inpatient treatment for other conditions.
This pandemic has not been handled well from day one and now politicians seem to even more out of depth, our own Great Leader seems to feel that comparing with the rest of the UK particularly England as justification for her ineptitude, in fact I am surprised she has not resorted to the SNP’S governments mantra of blaming Westminster for all Scotland’s ills.
The really scary thing is that the DR’s feel that they will never ever catch up with the backlog which means longer and longer waits for treatment etc and obviously higher excess death rates.
I completely agree. I am concerned about my health recently and have made attempts to get something done by my GP. He agreed that further investigations should be done by either a cardiologist or a neurologist (or both) to determine the cause of my problems, but assured me that it would take a MINIMUM of 6 months before I could get to see them.
Consequently, and being more worried about it than I was, Marge insisted that we arrange to see a specialist privately. TWO DAYS, not SIX MONTHS!
I can see that this country, and its much vaunted NHS, is going to become like another little America. Those who can afford it will receive superior medical attention to those who can’t.
Who do we blame? I’d say primarily our politicians who seem more intent on feeding the world (or inviting them all into the UK) than looking after our own people, but also the NHS itself which has become top heavy with overpaid administrators and managers who are not even involved in the clinical work. The NHS has become a self-sustaining bureaucracy more than a health service.
You’re so right in your assessment of the current health service predicament, though …
Thanks to BJ’s inept responses to the pandemic, those of us requiring any sort of medical treatment for ongoing issues have either been forgotten about or placed at the back of a queue …
To be perfectly honest, I don’t fully understand why general practices are under immense pressure.
Ours, as far as I know, still has the same number of GPs, at least going by their web site, and they apparently spend most of their time on telephone consultations which can’t take any longer than face-to-face consultations.
Can anyone explain what they are now obliged to do which makes things more difficult and time-consuming for them?
Twice I have been given the wrong diagnosis via a telephone consultation in one case it resulted in me having make my way to the out of hours GP clinic at midnight and finally getting treatment for the correct condition, yet to get an apology from the GP?
