Hospitals

[Andrew]

The Vet in Storrington is open 24 hours and sees patients constantly over a 24 hour period.

[Brian Gaff]

You might be better off asking them. I'd doubt if the range of services and clinics are available at weekends as are available during the week, so although the nuts and bolts work, often if a big emergency arrives many have to be on call. I do agree however on one thing, the wrong sort of admin staff are employed. The ones who really do the paperwork like issuing cvis if there is an eye clinic and who liaise with local authorities about people going home who need social services is very under resourced.There are too many top admin people an not enough of the workers. Brian

[Andrew]

And if they didn't, all manner of people would use the hospital car park for free.

Car 'sharers', ebay car sellers, you name it, they have all been known to operate from hospital car parks. Ditto motorway refreshment and petrol stations.

Plus Nu Labias obsession with making it difficult for car owners preferring that everyone would go by bus.

[Andrew]

Well you can blame Gordon Brown for his Pension Lifetime Allowance for that, plus the final salary pension scheme. He thought he was ensnaring FTSE100 bosses, who were being awarded massive pension awards with a punitive tax, but forgot the law of unintended consequences.

If I could manage to get my SIPP to be worth more than £1,050,000 then I would be looking at a ** 55% ** tax on the excess as a result even if, I had only contributed a lot less, but made some wonderful investment choices to boost its value. No other tax rate comes anywhere near this, not even IHT.

NHS consultants are typically on £150K with all the add-ons that they can earn, including the secretive 'merit payments' that they decide themselves.

Even taking a simple salary like £100K, with 40 years service could mean a pension of £50K and a tax-free lump sum of £150K. I would need a pension fund of about about £2 million to get an RPI-linked annuity paid from age 60 to get the same, but then I would have to pay 55% tax on the excess above £1,050,000 so in fact I would need more like £2.6 million to get the same pension.

You cannot have one rule for people with private pensions and a separate more generous rule for public service workers.

The NHS pensions scheme is totally unfunded, the taxpayer pays the whole lot remember. We have over a trillion pounds of unfunded pension liabilities as a result. McDonnell has already said how he will 'fund' them, by stealing 10% of ALL company dividends, the same dividends that private pension providers depend on (with low gilt yields) to pay annuities.

When GPs, Head teachers and hospital consultanst were given those eye watering pay deals back in the late 90's and early noughties, part of the deal should have been an immediate change from final-salary to career average (which is now the case for newer hospital doctors and others).

The intergenerational foundation has been doing some investigation into this :-

[Andrew]

Hospitals haven't employed gardeners for decades you berk, haven't you heard of pfi ?.

And wages and accounts are not done by anyone based in a hospital.

[Graeme]

In message [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

Absolutely not, although that does beg the question, why doesn't all of the NHS work shifts, 24/7? Given all the responses so far, there seems to be massive amounts of space and very expensive equipment sitting around gathering dust for 128 out of 168 hours per week. A huge waste?

[Steve Walker]

Because, on the whole, staff also have families and want a life, so unless you want to pay considerably higher hourly rates for unsocial hours, it makes sense to only have a minimum "out of hours" - or staff are likely to quit and take up a job that lets them experience their children growing up or go out with their friends like other people.

SteveW

[Andrew]

Yes, but just try and get any changes past the NHS unions

[The Natural Philosopher]

If the NHS does such a thing as cost benefit analysis, you ensure that the depreciation and interest on capital outlay on lost hours on the scanner etc is equal to the cost of wages that would be needed to operate it out of hours.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. a lot of the minions regard the NHS as a huge money pot that is there to provide them with not very hard work with a bloody good pension at the end, and the more the merrier.

[michael adams]

To work 24/7 to make full use of all this expensive equipment, would require

2 or 3 times the staff. When the NHS is already short of staff.as it is.

Or had that point not occurred to you ?

michael adams

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[Dave Plowman (News)]

If I do decide to drive to my hospital, I park on the street and pay by Parkmobile. That way I only pay for the time I'm there - rather than 1 hour chunks as in the car park. And I can park closer to the bit of the hospital I want than the car park. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

True. And my brother who has had to be there with SIL quite a bit recently says it's now far more difficult to find a space than when you paid for it.

[Andrew]

Oh no it wouldn't. NHS staff who are not nursing or medical are notoriously inefficient jobsworths.

Only the unions would demand 3 times as many people.

[michael adams]

Who are the very ones using all this very expensive equipment which is sitting around gathering dust for 128 out of 168 hours per week. And ?

Or had that thought not occurred to you either ?

michael adams

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[michael adams]

No worries. After a No Deal Brexit, when nobody will be able to afford to run a car let alone get petrol, you'll still be able to hire someone to drag you to the hospital on a sled.

Another good business opportunity going begging, if you ask me.

michael adams

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[Andrew]

You really are clueless about the existing overstaffing in NHS path labs and radiology depts, thanks to the union bully boys.

No need for 3x more people.

[charles]

Normal working hours 35. Hours in a week 168 That's 4.8 times

[nightjar]

On 07/10/2019 11:50, Martin Brown wrote: ...

All my local hospitals have a cheaper public car park somewhere within easy walking distance.

[michael adams]

Previously you retricted your criticism to staff "who are not nursing or medical"

Are you now claiming that none of the staff who work in path labs and radiology depts have any medical qualififications ?

And in any case, what proportion exactly of this "very expensive equipment which is sitting around gathering dust for 128 out of 168 hours per week" are you claiming is being used by these supposedly grossly over-staffed and unqualified radiographers and pathologists ?

michael adams

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