UK General Election 2017 - 8 June

[randomlegend]

View Tweet

Jesus christ.

I'm glad people have started sharing their payslips. All doctors are paid badly, frankly, considering the level of training and responsibility but F1 pay is genuinely scandalous. Anyone who has drunk the Lee cool-aid that they are always closely supervised and never left alone to deal with serious ill patients has been conned.

The BMA also really needs to get across what "junior doctor" and "trainee" actually means to the public. The majority of the public actually seem to be onside, but the ones against are mainly because they think a "junior doctor" is just someone fresh out of Uni. The reality is, if you get admitted with sepsis on the brink of death or perforate your bowel and need massive emergency surgery, the majority of the time the person who keeps you alive (a senior registrar with 5/6/7/8+ years post-graduate experience) is a "junior doctor" and a "trainee".

[Lewis]

It's always going to be hard for doctors to earn more (despite their best efforts to prevent the government training more) between working for a government monopoly and the United Kingdom hoovering up half the third world's doctors every year. Maybe if they didn't all support those things. Oh well.

As for matey, won't half of those deductions be his pension and student loan? The terms of the latter are a bit ridiculous, but then maybe you didn't need the PhD (sez me).

[Boydy]

Is it doctors preventing the government from training more? I always assumed the government just didn't want to fund since they could nick already trained third world doctors.

As for matey, do you expect him to not have a pension? Student loans can fuck right off though. Should all be written off and scrapped.

[Luke Emia]

Is it doctors preventing the government from training more? I always assumed the government just didn't want to fund since they could nick already trained third world doctors.

As for matey, do you expect him to not have a pension? Student loans can fuck right off though. Should all be written off and scrapped.

No he should be able to have a pension but let's not fuck about the terms of pensions within the public sector are far too generous and this does get forgotten about when people start moaning about pay in these sectors.

[randomlegend]

I haven't personally looked at this myself, but what I've read is that the generous pension deal people talk about isn't what the current crop of junior doctors are on.

[Luke Emia]

I haven't personally looked at this myself, but what I've read is that the generous pension deal people talk about isn't what the current crop of junior doctors are on.

Could well be the case to be fair. But from what I know as a minimum the NHS will match the person contributions up to 13.2% which is still bloody good compared to anything you will get in the private sector.

When it comes to pensions though I saw a retired teacher a few weeks ago looking at her pension. Final Salary Pension was nearly £50k and she walked away with £195,000 as a lump sum. That's fucking incredible as a pension and more like what I would expect to see from someone who's executive level in a big firm.

[Don]

That's just standard among these public sector cunts, I suspect. Ours were reformed in 2016 just as I joined to mass outrage and they still remain incredibly attractive so I don't even wanna know how many brasses these old retiring fucks are getting in.

[Lewis]

Is it doctors preventing the government from training more? I always assumed the government just didn't want to fund since they could nick already trained third world doctors.

As for matey, do you expect him to not have a pension? Student loans can fuck right off though. Should all be written off and scrapped.

I'm sure that the state is happy to go along with it, despite it being objectively bad and seriously unethical, but yes, there is lots of stuff out there (I'm phone-posting) from the BMA or whoever openly saying that they want to throttle supply (and why wouldn't they). Monopoly provision is the bigger issue.

Public sector pensions (mine being one) are pretty incredible. I was told they are equivalent to something like an extra third on top of your salary, so there ought to be a discussion about reducing them and paying that extra salary now so that people can buy houses or whatever.

[randomlegend]

I'm sure that the state is happy to go along with it, despite it being objectively bad and seriously unethical, but yes, there is lots of stuff out there (I'm phone-posting) from the BMA or whoever openly saying that they want to throttle supply (and why wouldn't they). Monopoly provision is the bigger issue.

Public sector pensions (mine being one) are pretty incredible. I was told they are equivalent to something like an extra third on top of your salary, so there ought to be a discussion about reducing them and paying that extra salary now so that people can buy houses or whatever.

I think the BMA position is a lot more nuanced than you are making it out to be (surprise surprise).

They voted against increasing medical school places because there are already not enough training posts for the doctors we currently produce. Their argument is we shouldn't be creating more places at medical school for those people to then qualify as doctors and have no place to take up on the Foundation Programme. Anyone who did qualify without a Foundation post to take up is in a seriously precarious position because you have to complete F1 and obtain full registration within a relatively short period (3 years I think) or you cannot become a fully fledged doctor in the UK. You'd literally have to go and train in another country. Non-training posts for F1s are also extremely limited, because they don't have full registration.

There are also insane bottlenecks for speciality training, with many excellent candidates having to apply for numerous years to be successful (and with nonsense/arbitrary measures used to differentiate people). This leaves people in perpetual SHO hell despite the fact they are more than qualified and competent to continue training.

The BMA are not against training more doctors, they are against creating more doctors who there is then no capacity to train.

[7om]

This is quite scary for me, as I’ll be going into F1 next year. The bottlenecks are getting worse at different points on the ladder. Getting an F1 spot seems to be relatively guaranteed but your core trainee and specialty trainee spots are having 3,4 or 5 people for every 1 training post available. It’s quite disheartening.

People bang on about training more doctors but that’s not the issue. It’s having higher level training spots for them to progress in to.

[niko_cee]

Is the problem with doctoring that there is an expectation [perhaps not unreasonable] of linear progression into consultancy, but the end result of that is having too many [relatively] highly paid consultants when what you actually need is more of the hard working minions [SHOs I guess]? In every other profession that sort of progression is generally tied to performance [ie revenue raising] so, other than earning all your money via private gigs on the side/Saturday hip-replacements, I'm not sure how that is sustainable in a public service under the NHS model.

Our [Guernsey's] health system seems to be fairly crippled by this - there is an expectation of specialist [consultant] led care but the end result is a wildly expensive system [anecdotally our consultants earn 4 to 5 times what the NHS going rate is for them and we have to pay £60 to see a GP] and long delays in the system because there simply aren't enough doctors to [presumably] deal with the more mundane shit which presents most of the time.

Or is it just Lee and co feathering their nests and wasting vast amounts of public money?

[randomlegend]

It's a combination of things I think.

There are shortages of registrars and consultants in most specialities - as well as GPs - so we're certainly not at the point where too many senior people is an/the issue.

I suspect there is a degree of deliberately keeping people in SHO purgatory to act as service provision. However, the whole point of the creation of the PA role was so that they could take on a significant proportion of the minion work (discharge letters, prescribing, requesting scans, essentially the glorified admin work that F1s and SHOs do) to allow the doctors to actually be trained. The amount of teaching/training most juniors get is frankly absolutely disgraceful. The problem which is emerging is that PAs are generally in fixed posts, whereas doctors still have rotational training inflicted upon them where they move departments or even hospitals every few months. The department's therefore get to know the PAs and they end up taking the training opportunities, whilst the rotational doctors who are only there for a few months get relegated to grunt work. Because why would anyone give a shit about training them when they won't remember their name on a few months? Its becoming a huge problem in some specialities - surgical ones especially - and if we aren't careful we are going to end up with an extremely deskilled generation of doctors. Rotational training just needs to die, it's an abominable way to treat young professionals, but I can understand why it's difficult to get rid of from a service provision perspective. There are a whole load of other issues with PAs that I could get into but probably not that interesting.

There is also - as I've spoken about before - enormous amounts of waste brought about by short termist thinking and frank incompetence in the NHS.

[niko_cee]

It's a real no-mark-off for next leader of the SNP isn't it? Legacy in the gutter and all that.

Being 'socially conservative' [probably the worst type of conservatism] must be a hard circle to square with also being SNP Scotch.

Can see Humza winning it unless they want to Swinney themselves into obscurity [he has whoever was the old labour guy up there written all over him]. Big wins for Sir Keir Starmer incoming.

[Lofty]

Whoever wins still has their leg in the trans bear trap regardless of their views.

[Lewis]

More of a man trap than a bear trap.

[Lofty]

Even as a liberal bleeding heart leftie I think Rishi's 'just give them a questionnaire no face to face interview' strategy for Asylum seekers is mental.

[Shindig]

10 page questionnaire? It's just a Great Place to Work Survey, isn't it?

[niko_cee]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64745258

[Shindig]

She looks like she should eat less turnips.

[Spikey M]

She should eat more cyanide.

[Lofty]

Tory councillors knocking on doors asking about voting intentions round here

[Ben]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64785574

Are the SNP trying to sabotage themselves?

Whether you agree with this policy or not (and I mean, the similar Pfand system in Germany works well in my experience), why torpedo one of the few unique policies that Scotland has over the rest of the UK? Scottish Labour must be loving this.

[Ian]

I can't quite figure out with that return scheme (given there seem to be lots of examples that work elsewhere) if there is a fundamental issue / difference that means the proposed version is shitter or if people just don't like change.

I understand the point of view of smaller producers, distributors elsewhere but their equivalents in other countries must be doing alright through their versions of this?

[Boydy]

View Tweet

Can't wait to become the Hong Kong of the UK.

[Lewis]

Mong Kong.

[Boydy]

Lol

[Spikey M]

The dodgy deals that are going to be funnelled through Northern Ireland now

[phonics]

The dodgy deals that are going to be funnelled through Northern Ireland now

I love the idea of all this time, effort and money of Brexit just moving the dodgy deals 40 miles north.

[Lewis]

This 'Windsor Framework' is a load of shit and I don't see how the DUP will go for it. Good to see Steve Baker confirming that he had indeed had an actual MELTDOWN in recent times as well.

[Boydy]

This 'Windsor Framework' is a load of shit and I don't see how the DUP will go for it. Good to see Steve Baker confirming that he had indeed had an actual MELTDOWN in recent times as well.

What's wrong with it?

[Lewis]

It's an improvement on what has been happening insofar as the European Union has agreed to be slightly more sensible about certain things; but European law is still supreme, the 'Stormont Brake' is an absolute joke, and if it isn't all a deliberate effort to prevent us ever meaningfully diverging from Europe then it looks an awful lot like one.

[Spikey M]

Of course it is. And thankfully so.

It could have been avoided by, well, just staying part of the EU and accepting that we are just a colonial power in decline if we stand alone, but you know...

[Lofty]

Thankfully we've taken back control of our borders as promised and small migrant boats haven't increased by a billion percent

[Spikey M]

Better that than Polish lorry drivers and... erm... full shelves filled with affordable produce.

[Magic]

What about these leaks then?

[Spikey M]

What about these leaks then?

Turns out they aren't actually leaks.

[Magic]

Lol at all the Bovid stuff. Await your apologies Kiko.

[Kikó]

What am I supposed to apologising for?

[Magic]

Your entire position during the scamdemic was based on political games and lies.

[Kikó]

No, it really wasn't. Why would you say that?

[randomlegend]

The two unvaccinated mongs on the board parading around with no sense of smell and the lungs of a 60 year old proclaiming they've won is incredible.

[Don]

I asked this over a year ago and was met with deathly silence so I'll go again. Are you getting vaxxed regularly now? If not, why not?

[randomlegend]

Yes. As front line healthcare staff I'm offered boosters every so often (not sure the exact schedule, the last was about 3-4 months ago) and I take them up on the offer.

[Spikey M]

I asked this over a year ago and was met with deathly silence so I'll go again. Are you getting vaxxed regularly now? If not, why not?

No, but I don't think I'm allowed even if I could be arsed. Which I probably wouldn't. Don't regret getting vaxxed, nothing happened and every time I've had Covid it's been mild, but I wouldn't bother with any more.

[Kikó]

I asked this over a year ago and was met with deathly silence so I'll go again. Are you getting vaxxed regularly now? If not, why not?

If it was offered then yes. But we're at a lower risk age group and the disease is now endemic with a better range of treatments available so I doubt it'll be offered for a while.

[Lewis]

I feel like Matt Hancock trusting Isabel Oakeshott with anything says a lot more about him than any of the leaked messages ever could.

[Ben]

I've not read anything into it because I can't be arsed with Tory handbags but just by seeing the headlines, that shocked Pikachu meme is my immediate thought.

[Magic]

No, but I don't think I'm allowed even if I could be arsed. Which I probably wouldn't. Don't regret getting vaxxed, nothing happened and every time I've had Covid it's been mild, but I wouldn't bother with any more.

"Every time"

[Lofty]

I feel like Matt Hancock trusting Isabel Oakeshott with anything says a lot more about him than any of the leaked messages ever could.

Indeed, she is a vile little cretin. Still lol about her u turn on May calling a snap election when she had predicted just hours before it wouldnt happen. Hopefully he sues her and they both come out of it worse off.

[Spikey M]

"Every time"

Yep. 3 times to be exact. If you lived with a child you'd probably have had it more too.