Category Archives: Politics

What a Difference A Day Makes

What a Difference a day makes.

On the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings,

In the Commons, MPs paid tribute to the actions of NHS workers and members of the emergency services in the wake of the bombings.
Speaking during health questions in the chamber, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham described the actions of NHS staff on the day as “heroic”.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt praised the “extraordinary bravery” of the emergency services.

And then one day later

Public sector workers, including civil servants, teachers, nurses, police officers and members of the armed forces, face another four-year pay freeze as a result of today’s budget.

Lord Warner – A Challenge

Lord Warner has released a report stating that we should pay £10 ‘tax’ to use the NHS and that the NHS is ‘not cost effective’ despite all the evidence to the contrary. Both of these statements are frankly bollocks. However we have grown used to these lies and, as the media keeps pushing them, eventually they will be believed.

I looked up Lord Warner, he is the executive director along with a Suzanne Warner of ‘Sage Advice Ltd.’ A company that has no contact details, no website and no telephone number. At least none that I can find. This doesn’t mean that this ‘company’ is in any way dishonest, but as a simpleton in the ways of business I can’t see the reasoning behind it.

Of course, this, and Lord Warner’s previous job advising Apax Partners (a company that invests in private healthcare) might mean that he has some sort of vested interest in bringing about further privatisation of the NHS.

Sadly the newspapers only printed Lord Warner’s side of the story (i.e. Bullshit) and have not in any way highlighted these vested interests.

So, as I lay in bed trying to sleep but with sparking neurons of flaming anger keeping me awake I came up with an idea. It’s not a cunning idea, and Lord Warner would never agree to it, but it might be nice to dream.

You get a small, agile, hell – even amateur, filmmaker to stage an hour-long debate between Lord Warner and a defender of the NHS. They each have plenty time to prepare and can bring actual, real, evidence to defend their position – and this evidence is added to the debate, maybe even using whizzy computer graphics. Maybe there could be a referee who calls for the evidence to be brought out when one side or the other makes a statement and challenges the participants.

This film then goes up online where anyone can see it and we try to get newspapers (who really should be the people doing this sort of thing) to publicise it.

Every soundbite has to have evidence to back it up, there is no ‘playing to the crowd’, there is only truth.

Not that this sort of thing would ever be allowed – because Warner, (sorry, forgot the ‘Lord’ and tug of the forelock) already has all the power and this sort of truth finding would only have the risk of him seceding power to someone opposed to him. While the defender of the NHS has nothing to lose (except, y’know, the NHS) Lord Warner would have everything to lose by taking part in such a radical idea as a search for the actual real truth.

So, silly idea, but at least it gets this idea out of my head and onto the screen so that I can hopefully get some sleep.

That Forcefeeding Video

I’m going to state right now that for most cases I am completely against force-feeding. There are issues of capacity and sacrifice and so on that would take a post of its own to describe, and that is not what I’m writing about here.
 
It’s the Yasiin Bey video showing him undergoing the procedure for the force-feeding of a prisoner at Guantanamo bay. It was created to highlight the evil of force-feeding.  

Here it is.

 
I have serious issues with this video.

 
Here is another video showing the exact same procedure.

(Here is a video on how to insert one into an eight month old child)

The procedure shown is the insertion of a nasogastric (NG) tube. I have placed more NG tubes than I can remember and I have never seen a reaction as strong as that shown in the first video. It certainly isn’t very pleasant to have a NG tube inserted as it tickles the back of the throat that makes you want to gag (or swallow), but it is not this apparent torture that is being shown.

 
An NG tube is inserted in hospitals for a number of reasons, sometimes for surgery, sometimes because a patient cannot swallow.

 
In the first video Yasiin Bey isn’t given water to drink during the procedure, but in many of my patient’s I also couldn’t give them anything to drink to ease the passing of the tube as these patients would have no gag reflex and so giving them water could result in them inhaling rather than swallowing the water. Inhaling water can have side effects that include death.

 
Yasiin Bey is also shown to be resisting, while the person in the second video is complying with instructions. Many of the patients that I passed an NG tube into had some form of confusion, either due to a stroke, due to dementia or due to a multitude of other causes . In some cases I would be passing a tube into the stomach of someone against their will because they had tried to commit suicide and were under a Mental Health Section.

 
Even in these cases I never saw a reaction as strong as that of Yasiin Bey.

 
Note also in the video that at one point Yasiin Bey’s hands and head are restrained, but later on they they are free – all to show how the medical staff have to use physical force to hold him down which makes it look even more brutal.

Once an NG tube is in place you can leave it in. So it is not something that necessarily needs to be done twice a day although in this case they may remove the tube in order to stop the prisoner from hanging themselves with it, or for some other operational issue.

 
This video is bad for two reasons. First – it makes a medical procedure which is carried out in hospitals up and down the country in the order of probably hundreds of times a day look like torture. As I note, it’s not pleasant, but it certainly isn’t torture.

 
The second reason is that this video is, in my mind, a lie. The discomfort is exaggerated, the physical restraint is unnecessary, and it is filmed to be as ‘shocking’ as possible.

 
Similar to what Islamaphobes do this is ‘othering’ the enemy. The people inserting the tube aren’t human, they don’t have faces – they are just shown as unremitting medical automatons. How is this different to how Islamaphobes only show the fully veiled woman or the bearded terrorist?

This video is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine campaigner, thrashing, fainting and drooling after a ‘flu jab. And we would challenge that video as being untruthful. We need to do the same here.

We need to be better than this – the Islamaphobes and warmongers can and do lie, they hide things, they distort and deny. Those of us on the side of peace need to avoid stooping to this level. We need to be better than this, because every time our opposing number can catch us in a lie our support will drop, we’ll be targeted by the media (just look at how the news is now about Snowden himself and not about how the NSA and others spying on us), and what is worse is we’ll lose the support of those who are most likely to be swayed by truth.

 
Truth sets us free, propaganda keeps us in chains – and in my opinion this is propaganda.

Our New War

The secretary of defence, Phillip Hammond, has stated that he will resist any further cuts to the armed forces. He said that the government’s priority was that they should be ‘defending the country and maintaining law and order’. He has said that the welfare should be cut by 0.5% in order to keep the armed forces at their current level.

The problem that I have with these statements is that ‘defence’ no longer means what it meant in the past. If you want to protect the people of Britain from death and injury then invasion from foreign powers comes pretty low down on the list of things we need to worry about.

Let’s take a look at the number of people who have died from ‘War’ in 2011 − 14 people.

The number of people who have died from infectious diseases is – 484,367 people.

By some coincidence the number of people who have also died from heart disease is – 484,367 people.

How about people who have died from just ischaemic heart disease? – 64, 435 people

How about the common type of age-related diabetes? – 1889 people.

Malnutrition killed 65 people in 2011.

Over four and a half times more people died of malnutrition than died in war. In a developed country.

(All numbers from the ONS – a fascinating read, although perhaps not recommended for hypochondriacs).

It is well known that poverty massively increases your chances of developing heart disease. Looking at a few studies, poverty pretty much doubles your chances of developing heart disease.

Poverty is one of the biggest influences on poor health, if you are a poor child then your risks of becoming chronically ill and dying young are greatly magnified.

Don’t take my word for it – google ‘poverty health outcomes uk’.

Our new war, from what we need more defence against, is disease. 

While I’m not going to argue that we disband the armed forces, our current threats are more terrorist than state-led. I doubt that the countries of the world are sitting around thinking ‘If only Britain didn’t have an army, we could roll in and conquer them completely’.  I’d suggest that if you look at the reasons given for the most recent UK terrorist attacks – it’s because we have soldiers in Afghanistan ‘protecting British interests’ by shooting at brown people that we have idiots blowing themselves up on public transport.

No, our biggest threat to life in the UK is disease the risk of which is increased by poverty. Poverty can be countered by welfare, which Mr. Hammond would like to see cut, and by the NHS, which is having it’s budget slashed while large parts of it are being sold off to private companies who want to make a profit from your sickness.

We need our ‘army’ to fight against what kills more people – disease, and by extension, poverty. At the moment the ‘slack’ in the system of dealing with disease is pretty much non-existent. Look at when one kebab shop was delivered contaminated meat – Seventy people became ill and made the local hospital declare an internal major incident. I know – I was there.

Now imagine what it will be like when the last antibiotics stop working, or when an influenza epidemic hits. We need to be investing now in order to save lives.

So instead of welfare and the NHS budget being cut so that soldiers can continue to war on the other side of the world, we need more effort to remove poverty from Britain and we need an NHS that will be able to cope with the incoming health crises that are likely  to be just around the corner.

Conspiracy Theory

The government closes the wards at a hospital and reduces funding so that the A&E four hour wait target is failed. The government then calls it a ‘failing hospital’ and sells it off to a private company. The government then gives the private company plenty of taxpayer’s money so that it can re-open the wards, reduce the waiting time and become a ‘succeeding hospital’.

The now succeeding hospital now turns a profit which goes into the pockets of the private comapany’s shareholders – who just happen to be members of the current government.

After all if it’s good enough for Gove to do to schools, it’s good enough for Hunt and Lansley to do to hospitals.

It’s Not Rocket Science

It is really quite simple – there aren’t enough ambulances to meet demand, why there aren’t takes a little more thought (but not much).

Take for example this story about a cyclist waiting two hours to go to hospital, and then needing a helicopter to pick them up.

A cyclist who broke his hip in an accident was forced to spend two hours lying on the roadside before being transported in the back of a furniture van flagged down by police because there were no ambulances available.

“I was there for a long time – two hours – and in a lot of pain because I have a low resting heartbeat which means I couldn’t be given morphine. It was raining and I was getting really cold and shivery.

“Eventually more paramedics arrived with blankets but I was still lying on the roadside and I was told I wasn’t even on the waiting list for an ambulance because there was a shortage.

“The paramedics were really kind and professional and caring but they were all saying this was ludicrous and down to budget cuts.”

In despair, the paramedics called for an air ambulance but were told the nearest one, in Essex, couldn’t take off because of high winds. A second helicopter from Norfolk was scrambled but couldn’t land in the road because of safety problems so had to touch down a mile away from Mr Knight.

“A policeman flagged down a passing furniture van driver and asked him to take me,” said Mr Knight.

Now add in the recent report showing that there just aren’t enough beds in hospital, and if there are enough beds then patients coming into the emergency department can’t be sent to the wards. This means the the emergency department gets full and they haven’t the room to take a patient off of an ambulance stretcher. This means the ambulance spends longer waiting and can’t turnaround for another call.

The number of people left waiting in ambulances outside accident and emergency (A&E) departments for more than half an hour has risen by over 100,000 in just two years, raising fears over the NHS’s ability to safely achieve the government’s aim of £20bn in efficiency savings.



Realise that ‘efficiency savings’ in real english is ‘cuts‘.

So, not enough beds means that ambulances have to wait longer to get clear of hospitals which results in increased waiting times for ambulances.The solution to this problem is apparently to close some emergency departments so that waiting times will get longer.

The results of a public consultation on the closure of four hospital accident and emergency units in north-west London have been released. The findings show support for ending services at Charing Cross, Central Middlesex, Hammersmith and Ealing.

I despair, I honestly do.

Nothing To Hide (Apparently)

Remember when the government rolls out the fallacy of ‘If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear’? They normally do this when talking about the ability to spy on all our emails and phone calls, install CCTV in our homes and other such privacy busting measures. After all, the argument goes, if we are all open and honest about everything then crime, terrorism and pedophiles will no longer exist.

(I’ll not delve too deeply into that particular fallacy)

Well it seems that they have not taken this motto to their own breast. Instead the government has decided to veto the information commissioners order to reveal the NHS Risk Register.

Let me explain the risk register, because part of the reason the government says it wants to keep this secret is because it is awfully complicated and it is unlike us mere members of the public could ever understand it.

The NHS risk register is how to measure the risk of something bad happening due to to governments changes. It does this by measuring two things – how likely something is to happen and how bad it would be if that something did happen. It measures both of these elements on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst.

So for example – rating the likelihood of something bad happening, you would give ‘Being hit by a meteorite’ a 1 because it is incredibly unlikely. You would give ‘Being hit by a bus’ a 2 because it is more likely (though not common), and you would give ‘catch a cold’ a 5 because it is really quite likely.

Then you rate the impact that a bad thing would have, again on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst. So ‘Being hit by a meteorite’ would be a 5 because it’s likely to kill you stone dead. ‘Being hit by a bus’ is probably a 4, it’s likely to do some lasting damage to you. ‘Catching a cold’ would be a 1 because it’s unlikely to do very much harm to you.

You then multiply these two numbers together to get the relative risk. So ‘being hit by a meteorite’ would be a 5 (1×5) because while it is really nasty it’s unlikely to happen. ‘Being hit by a bus’ would be a 8 (4×2) and ‘Catching a cold’ would be a 5 (1×5) because although it is likely in the wet and cold climate of the UK the actual harm is quite small.

These numbers are actually based on science, previous evidence and clever predictions- unlike what i have just done these numbers are not just plucked out of thin air. It’s a good way of managing and mitigating the harm of the risks involved in any activity.

That is the risk register in a nutshell. It’s the equivalent of buying a car after kicking the tyres and checking that it’s not two cars welded into one.

As the NHS reform bill went through the various stages of being voted on by the commons and the lords, a number of people who were to vote on it asked if they might actually look at the risk register – kick the tyres as it were. At each request the government refused. Why would the people voting for this legislation need to see if this car is a ringer? Don’t you trust the government? You must be some sort of Trotsky.

At one point in the lords, they actually voted against seeing the risk register. I believe this is the lord’s version of sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly.

The information commission, after a freedom of information request, ruled that the government should publish the risk register, the government then went to a number of different courts in an effort to not do this. However, none of the courts agreed with the government because, well, they aren’t idiots.

Yesterday the government invoked the nuclear option – a veto for ‘exceptional circumstances’. Stating that the reason for this veto was because ‘otherwise the civil service might tell lies if they realise that the plebs might look at their working out’.

Essentially the government is admitting that the risk register is full of 4×4 and 5×5 risks and that if the public were to see this then they might start questioning if the NHS reform bill was actually worth the risk. Why else would you work so harm to hide something if it’s contents were not explosive to your governing of the UK?

In the Queens speech today one plan was for ‘businesses to have less inspection’. Ostensibly so that they can get on with the business of making profit rather than, I dunno, being in compliance with the law. I suspect that this will apply to all those private companies taking over parts of the NHS – After all, actually inspecting them might show that the companies involved may not have their patient’s best interests at heart. And that would be damaging to the government.

I would be willing to put money on the risk register containing a 4×4 risk of ‘Private healthcare companies break the law and provide sub-standard service’…

 


This blogpost was written while listening to Rob Dougan ‘Furious Angels’

 

Two Things

I write this on the first day of the end of the NHS which comes despite the cries of pretty much every professional health-care body, a public petition that passed the ‘will be discussed in parliament’ (and then wasn’t), legal challenges to let us poor dumb voters know that a proper risk assessment was actually done and a general feeling that we are being screwed over.

I can list the ways in which the public of England have been screwed over, at some point in the future I’ll start talking about how we in Newham are already feeling the effects of the changes – and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that it’s not leading to better patient care.

While I am angry that all this is being done in the cause of ideology, and that the Liberal Democrats are playing the part of a puppy rolling over hoping for it’s belly to be scratched by Cameron, examining my feelings it is something else that is raising my blood pressure.

No, it’s frustration. It’s the feeling that no matter what we do, no matter how much we shout, no matter how many petitions, no matter how many MPs we write to that nothing will change. The government has it’s fingers in their ears shouting ‘Lalala – we can’t hear you’.

It’s the fact that the media would rather cover sports than the fate of the NHS. Take for example the recent peaceful protest where armed and riot police were in attendance kettling protestors. There was little to no coverage in the mainstream media about it.

This is the root of my anger – that there seems to be no way of fighting back against these unwanted changes.

I wish I were an organiser, I wish I have the knowledge and the skill to muster a group of people to help fight this. Instead I have two ideas – but no skill to make them happen.

First – the Risk register that the government is trying to hide should be published – and if this means a brave soul who has the register manages to leak it then so be it. Let it into the public domain so that it might be looked at fully by everyone – only then will I not believe that this whole act is driven by ideology.

Secondly – For every MP that voted for this bill I would have a group of smart and motivated people look into that person’s conduct. Expose every dodgy deal, all the MPs who have a stake in private medical companies, every campaign contribution. Not doing anything illegal – but showing every bit of corruption until finally it reaches a critical mass and there is no option but for that MP to resign (or be fired)*.

I’m one of those horribly idealistic people who thinks that if enough people see the truth then the world can change.

Stupid, I know, but it might be worth a try.

*And once we’ve done it to those who voted for the bill, we can do it to every other MP – might keep them a bit more honest…