Thursday, June 21, 2012
Two tweets to the NHS
Biggish piece in yesterday's Guardian about how it is possible that the substantial cut being made to the NHS budget will result in a substantial cut being made to the health outcome. Why do governments persist with the nonsense that you can cut public sector budgets without any untoward effects? That the cuts can all get lost in efficiency savings. You would not run a private business on such tosh, whatever you might tell the press.
Then, some time ago, I remarked on how badly we managed the supply of teachers, particularly since the supply of children was a reasonably predictable quantity. I remark today on how badly we manage the supply of doctors. Bad again because the supply of unhealth is a reasonably predictable quantity but also because it takes a lot of time and money to train a doctor. The Brown/Blair gang push the health budget up to unsustainable levels and now the Cameron/Osborne gang is pulling it back down again. With one result being that a lot of expensively trained doctors are not going to get jobs, at least not the ones they expected when they started out. All terribly wasteful.
PS: more of the odd white highlighting creeping in from somewhere. Not to mention unwanted and invisible line feeds. Blog team alert!
PPS: take a mention in the geek dispatches. I managed to edit the underlying HMTL to get rid of the offending formatting. A plus for the blogger product that it lets you do such things - but let's hope there are no untoward side effects.
Then, some time ago, I remarked on how badly we managed the supply of teachers, particularly since the supply of children was a reasonably predictable quantity. I remark today on how badly we manage the supply of doctors. Bad again because the supply of unhealth is a reasonably predictable quantity but also because it takes a lot of time and money to train a doctor. The Brown/Blair gang push the health budget up to unsustainable levels and now the Cameron/Osborne gang is pulling it back down again. With one result being that a lot of expensively trained doctors are not going to get jobs, at least not the ones they expected when they started out. All terribly wasteful.
PS: more of the odd white highlighting creeping in from somewhere. Not to mention unwanted and invisible line feeds. Blog team alert!
PPS: take a mention in the geek dispatches. I managed to edit the underlying HMTL to get rid of the offending formatting. A plus for the blogger product that it lets you do such things - but let's hope there are no untoward side effects.
# posted by Jim @ 1:13 AM 
