FlyTheNest

My respect and admiration for Thornberry increases with new information learned, many thanks for that post

where'd everyone go?

Conference Call.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42590781


Airport bars could face hours limits to curb flight rage

Seriously?

Nanny state!

First one to break ranks...



I'm assuming that the further evidence was the admission of being a porn addict but there may be something I've missed. the next phase will be "How come Gove allowed him to open a school?"

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

I don't drink,I have avoided long haul flights,found other ways to save the risk of lack of nicotine rage (the patch is just an annoyance,even eating it didn't much help)

Your prophet propositions a freed leadership.

(sigh).

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LET'S FACE IT I'M JUST 'KIN' SEETHIN'

It seems May has spoken out about Toady (according to the Mail). Surprised she got there before Jess Philips (even though she is a week late).

Reported that the PM is going to reshuffle her government this coming week.

Given that David Davis should have been kicked out weeks ago, this is madness.



The trads amongst edu twitter will be beside themselves if Gibb gets the job. Textbooks! More phonics! More textbooks! Phonics textbooks!!

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Did you see this ?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/boos ... racy-drive

Yes. I liked this which just happened to pop up.

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

"We have to get rid of him!"
"I know - let's give him first secretary - a non-job where he can't do any more damage"
"Excellent idea!"

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Mirror saying Milton for Hunt,Rudd for Hammond.Hunt for Rudd.Hammond for above.

Maybe deciding by musical chairs.

Arm wrestling

Paper,scissors,rock,best of five.

Pass the cabinet post.

If they really want to reduce the number of MPs then the way of reducing cabinet members is to remove one chair...

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

goodnight, everyone
love,
cJA

Would that mean that you could only indulge in flight rage between certain hours?

Good morfternoon.

(Well, it's non time-specific, after all.)

the only reason I can think of that the Brexit team of Johnson, Fox and Davis are still in post and will continue to be post-reshuffle is that may thinks that it's their mess and they need to stand by it and sort it out.

And if they can't and we end up remaining then that's down to them - they can take the blame.

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Night night.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... es-medical
"Mass closure of NHS walk-in centres is fuelling winter crisis, claim campaigners"


Obviously.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... olonialism
"The sun may never set on British misconceptions about our empire"

https://thewire.in/209830/bengal-famine ... sh-empire/
"Digging Up British Empire’s Bloody Legacy in India"

Fun, accessible reflection on different healthcare systems.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... acket.html

I don't think the UK's is the best either, but the costs of transition are too high for anything but incremental change

Yes, that was sad to hear.

I started buying The Guardian in the early 80s and still do today although what with finances becoming tighter, I think I may ditch Monday-Friday.

I still wish they'd "accidentally" shredded the papers they then handed over to government which got Sarah Tisdall jailed.

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Trailer --- https://vimeo.com/237292597

Apologies about very distant history are so Tony Blair !
I thought 'honest schooling' on history was already an objective ?

Switzerland's health care system is good if you can afford it - which a lot of people cannot now

I know someone who went in for a double cataract operation but insurance didn't cover a hospital stay so they cam home as it would have cost £2000 per night

Those who are most in need of care of the ones who probably have the worst cover and who will not be going for preventative care (at £150 per visit to the GP)

Insurance costs here are massively outstripping inflation and pay rises, and of course the insurance companies are creaming off money from the top and the bureaucracy and fragmentation must cost a fortune (but difficult to find out how much) - it is a cartel with little competition - and to be honest, what the fuck are we doing accepting a 'market' in health provision where to take advantage you have to change suppliers, like fucking mobile subscribers and explain your health situation to a fucking insurance salesman!

So, according to these people who don't live in Switzerland, the best system is one that is good if you are rich and not great if you are poor - not surprising really

https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-does-uk-h ... ationally/

Universal health care that doesn't discriminate on ability to pay and doesn't allow private insurance companies to profit from healthcare is the best way to go - the insurance has not contributed 1 cent since I was here so it means that I have been a nice profit centre of £30K for them.....that should go to the Government not shareholders and salaries of an insurance company!

He had some idiosyncratic views, but was an interesting man - and the paper under his editorship was consistently good.

RIP.

In Switzerland there is very little preventative care because the system is fragmented and doctors are individuals based in shopping centres and the like who have no real central direction. The surgeries are very well equipped but so they should be for the amount of money these guys have available and it doesn't seem very efficient to me

Hospitals are a different matter and that is where very good care can be had - but we pay more in insurance because we have two expensive local hospitals but the neighbouring canton plays 20% less for some reason. There is a street where one side pay 30% less for their premiums than the other side

There is no centrally organised cervical or breast cancer screenings in place, no real encouragement for people to get regular check-ups. The insurance companies try to do things and give you money off if you do some preventative things but it is bureaucratic and you have to explain yourself in a foreign language to a faceless telephone operator over the phone

Very little personal contact as far as I have seen

Luckily for the insurance companies the Swiss are hypochondriacs so they do well out of it - and don't get me started on homeopathy here!

So if you believe "Shippers" the PM is mostly going to be purging "moderates" from her cabinet.

Not much sign of the Tories going for "leapfrogging" Labour re soft Brexit, if that is indeed correct.

Tubby?

People who criticise the NHS almost always compare it to systems in countries that spend more overall on their universal healthcare. Switzerland in particular spends considerably more per capita than the UK, as do France and Germany who have similar economies to ours. The UK in terms of spending is most similar to Italy, so it's worth looking at their system. This, in particular, is very interesting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Italy


The Italian healthcare system has very good health outcomes on things like cancer and was recently ranked second in the world by the WHO (these rankings are controversial, but still give a decent rough guide, I think). It has a significant level of public provision funded by taxes, notably including primary care which is in the private sector in the UK. So, a country which spends a similar amount and has good health outcomes has a system with plenty of public provision funded by taxes that is not so remarkably different from our own.

If you look at one of the best healthcare systems currently, in Norway, only about 15% of health spending is in the private sector. They do spend considerably more on their healthcare than the UK, though.

My point is that although there is room for improvement in the UK healthcare system, there are plenty of examples of public systems achieving very good health outcomes, so the assumption that the problem facing the NHS is that it's a public provided system does not track. On the other hand, the Italian system suggests the NHS's problem isn't just lack of funding. Italy does better with the same funding per person. So the way money is currently spent in the NHS needs to be reassessed. Certainly we used to do better with the money we had than we are doing right now. We are getting worse, not better. Personally I feel this is a result of the internal market introduced in the 80s and recent outsourcing to inexperienced private providers. I also wonder if there are lessons to be learned from countries with nationalised primary care. The one thing to remember though, when the right wingers declare that no other country uses a healthcare model like the NHS is that no two universal healthcare systems are the same, yet they can all work providing the will is there.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

On healthcare - I am also a bit skeptical of comparisons across health care systems - and people making comments that 'this this one is not the best' etc for the ones we are looking at

Unless you have lived in each country then I find it difficult to see how you can say and even then it is very individual depending on what your needs are. So Switzerland is probably a good system if you are well-off and need cancer treatment for example, but not so great if you are a poor immigrant who has a chronic condition.

Frog will be able to make some comparison between France and the UK, I can do Switzerland and the UK but those will be based on our own knowledge and experience - also my view of the NHS is from 2006 and we have had a lot of Tory Government since then!

The interactive above is next to useless in making real comparisons apart from what your philosophical preference is - I will probably be UK all the time as I am a firm believer in state-provided healthcare as the central pillar - with insurance and private at the fringes. I do not say I am right but based on what I have seen of the one nominated 'the best' above it is far from clear-cut

The UK has the NHS - it is one of the greatest things we have as a country - it should be funded to the level of other G7 countries for a start.

In the end the money comes from somewhere - so the US seems to spend a hell of a lot of money on health for a very fractured system.....I do not see why number of different private insurance companies (with very little real competition) are seen to be the one to provide healthcare better than one managed by a central system using the same amount of money?

Another cracking post - Willow is on fire over the last couple of days!

Good morfternoon.

No country with a centrally organised system spends anything like the same amounts on healthcare as the US does, we don't need to. Their system is massively inefficient.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

Thanks for this

It is a striking reminder that there are people still living who remember when the British was not quite the benign Empire that people like Farage are happy to portray

This is also the case in places like Palestine

There are still people living who remember the lies and the betrayals - and the politically expedient decisions taken by the British 8and the US, France etc) for their own benefit

These stories are told and understood locally which perhaps explains why the British are not as well regarded as we might think

Take, the discussion of yesterday on Iran. The British were part of a plot to overthrow the elected Government and replace them with a vicious dictatorship. This was in the memory of living people who are still living with the consequence of that decision. Now we have the British and US pontificating about how bad things are in Iran and how bad the Government is

Do you think the role of the UK and US in the 50's has been forgotten?

Do you think the Iranians have forgotten the support for Saddam in the 80s - how many people in the UK have heard of the Scott Report?

The British, as far as I can tell from my own experience, are pretty ignorant of our own role in fomenting things that we are still seeing problems with now

I am not saying all decisions were wrong, and all that we did was bad, but without this context it will be difficult to understand why the Indians, Chinese, Palestinians, Iranians etc are not very open to criticism coming from us - and actually it is counter-prodctive as it can be used by repressive regimes to gain popular support

Understanding history, or at least being aware of the importance of looking back to the last 100 years ago, can really help people to understand the current day.

How can anyone understand the border issues in Ireland and the importance if they are not aware of the British history in Ireland since Norman times, the role of Cromwell, the plantations, Wolfe Tone, the Famine, the Easter Rising, the Somme, the Ulster Volunteers, the Civil War, Partition, the Border Campaign, Civil Rights, the Troubles, Internment etc, etc

It doesn't take long to get a feeling for this but not many people bother before drawing their conclusions - I can tell you though the Irish know it off by heart and it drives a lot of their approach to Britain

I had a row (yes, Iknow very unlike me) with someone last week over the use of Ulster to describe NI - they were adamant that the two were the same and then I asked them what about Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal - they had never heard of them!

I agree but there are a lot of people who seem to like the idea - for reasons I think we all understand

I have never really seen anyone explain what benefit having a market in healthcare provision has for society in general - it can for certain individuals, normally the rich!

@HSOM

I have spent some time looking at different health systems and various figures and have tried to be objective when doing so. I believe firmly in universal healthcare, I think the outcome is more important than the system. Although it's difficult to draw definite conclusions, you do notice certain things. Like the fact that general taxation to fund health services is in no way as unusual as detractors of the NHS tend to suggest. Best outcomes aren't solely achieved by standard insurance based systems. There are a lot of mixed systems out there providing very good care too and even very good insurance based systems like in Germany don't always top the rankings for individual cancers. It's a very complex topic.

I also notice that we are spending more per capita than we were 5 years ago without any noticeable improvement in outcomes and care. My instinct is that we have failed to spend money effectively in response to an aging population. We have focused on changing management structures with the health and social care act, rather than on changing delivery structures with expansion of primary and social care needed for an aging population. I despair at a media narrative of a longterm decline of the NHS's ability to cope with modern demand. To me it seems the NHS was coping well with modest funds right up to the moment the Tories imposed a top down reorganisation to "save it".

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

I bow to your knowledge in this - I can only say what I know....and I do understand some of the weaknesses in the Swiss system that are possibly a bit hidden unless you live here

I agree with your conclusions - but that is more because I know what the Tories are like rather than based on solid data. Your opinion will carry much more weight than mine due to this

The list of Tory MPs who think that he should step down grows...

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

I have only enough knowledge to know comparing health systems is extremely complex! Just comparing basic statistics is a minefield, whilst some elements, such of ease of access, are hard to quantify and so the huge advantage the NHS has in this regard may be underestimated. Meanwhile, health outcomes aren't just a product of treatment but also wider economic systems. There is some evidence that high levels of inequality lead to worse health outcomes for all, including the better off. This could explain why Nordic countries, with lower inequality, often do well in health system rankings with commitment to equality pervading all areas of life, whereas here in the UK the NHS is operating in a more unequal society overall with health outcomes varying across regions.

Personally I feel we have a very good universal health system by and large with the NHS and although there is room for improvement, I can't see how changing to a different system would provide some kind of magic bullet, certainly not without spending more money, something we are repeatedly told we can't afford. I'd like to see if there are ways to improve primary care, maybe by taking it out of the private sector, and more import placed on reducing overall inequality as this would have a big positive impact on health.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes