‘Our Sacred Cow’ is back …

 

 

Have I got ‘Surprise News’ for you! No, not that “race” where Sunak and Truss are slinging mud at each other and where the broadsheet opinion makers are plumping for one or the other – no, it’s that some of our papers have opened another front. Our ever so beloved Sacred Cow has been out of the news for some time, but what time could be better to get back into the headlines than the present! Yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, the NHS ‘is on its knees’, yet again (link). 

However, this time around it’s different. The Red Tops are screaming while the broadsheets are a bit more reticent but over the weekend, there were reports indicating which direction this latest outcry is taking as I’ll explain below. Firstly, the articles about ‘worst staffing crisis evah’ which are based on the report of the HoC Health and Social Care Select Committee, chaired by a certain Mr Hunt. The Guardian writes:

“The hard-hitting report includes evidence showing that the staffing crisis in the NHS in England is even worse than official figures suggest. NHS Digital figures suggest that the service has vacancies for 38,972 nurses and 8,016 doctors. However, the real figures could be as high as 50,000 and 12,000 respectively, according to estimates the Nuffield Trust prepared for the MPs.” (link)

‘Official figures’: was the sacred NHS lying to us? Hm …The BBC quoted Mr Javid, another former Health Minister who told the HoC Committee that the government ‘was not on track’ to raise the number of GPs by 6,000 (link). It’s all the fault of ‘ministers’, i.e. the government, because it’s of course about ‘moar money for the NHS’. The Grauniad writes in an aside that the Nuffield Trust, which calculated the shock-horror number of 50,000 nurses needed,  made this point (my emphasis):

“The trust’s analysis accords with the view of many frontline doctors and managers that some posts are not advertised, and thus not picked up by the statistical agency, because hospitals cannot afford to fill them, even if suitable doctors or nurses are identified.” (link)

I’m not surprised, given the exorbitant stipends paid to the various ‘directors’ of the director-riddled NHS upper echelons. We recall from the covid years that these are in the region of £200,000+, and that there’s a large  number of said directors, COEs and what have you. I seem to recall the number ‘37’, but with all the reorganisations which have taken place who can know for sure. The Times picked up another item from this report, writing that 

“Bullying and sexism are forcing staff to quit the health service amid the “greatest workforce crisis in NHS history”, a report by MPs says. The health select committee says record waiting lists of 6.6 million are likely to rise because the government had no plan for staffing shortages. Latest figures show there are 105,000 vacancies in the NHS as doctors, nurses and midwives are driven out by burnout, bullying, pension rules and low pay.” (link, paywalled)

Doesn’t this read as if sexist male doctors are bullying poor female nurses? Aren’t there NHS managers already dealing with sexism and bullying? Oh – I see: all this could be ‘prevented’ if only the NHS were given ‘moar money’! The BBC is also going for the ‘money’ issue, trotting out the tired old horse of ‘surgeons and consultants’ earning too much, with this twist:

“The committee described a situation where NHS pensions arrangements meant some senior doctors were better off retiring or reducing their working hours as a “national scandal” and called for swift action to change the rules.” (link)

How dare they not keep working when their pensions are being penalised! The BBC doesn’t yet understand that this is a very slippery slope because there’s another group of doctors having reduced their working hours to such an extent that a large number are now only working half time: GPs. However, these GPs are mostly female and therefore untouchable. 

Under the headline: “Is this the end of the full-time family doctor? Exhausted GPs are cutting hours and quitting the NHS amid ever-soaring demand but technology may offer a solution for patients” (link, paywalled), The Times had a lengthy report in their weekend issue, with some interesting numbers.

After the usual meme that there are now ‘too many older people’ in the UK who ‘need more GP appointments’, we read for example that GPs must tend to more long-term ill because of the NHS backlog – thank you, Covid, Hancock, SAGE! See this:

“GPs have also heavily been involved in Covid booster vaccinations, particularly among the old. Including these, some 28.3 million GP appointments were made in May, compared with 25.3m in May 2019. Yet the supply of GPs has not kept up with demand: the number of full-time equivalents has fallen from 29,364 in 2015, to 27,627 in May 2022, meaning that the number of people per GP has risen from 1,870 to 2,040. In what experts have termed the “inverse care law”, there are fewer GPs in poorer areas – where they are most needed.” (link, paywalled)

Ah yes – “Teh Poor” of course needed to be wheeled out. Watch Labour homing in on this result, and expect Labour to do ‘something radical’ about this, but it won’t be a reduction of admin work. After all it was Saint Tone who created the box-ticking exercise:

“Government figures show that the typical GP is doing just six half-day sessions a week. Each four-hour session takes considerably longer once administrative work is factored in – yet working weeks are shrinking. Twenty years ago, the average GP worked a 47.7-hour week according to the government’s GP Worklife Survey. By 2017, this was 41.8 hours, and by 2021, it was just 38.4. Nearly a fifth of GPs report working an average of just 25 hours a week. Many GPs now have “portfolio careers”, spending the rest of their time in research and leadership roles – and in private healthcare.”  (link, paywalled)

Can’t have that, can we: down with ‘private healthcare’, let ‘Teh Rich’ take up even more GP appointments. That ‘work-life balance’ however looks to be untouchable because it’s mostly female GPs who use it. It’ll get worse because more females are now studying medicine and will probably insist on working half-time even as hospital doctors and consultants.

That’ll cost,  but the DM reports a beautiful proposal by a retired NHS CEO: “‘Charge hospital patients £8 a day and make over-60s pay for their prescriptions’ suggests former NHS trust chairman, in a bid to help the struggling health service” (link) – nice. Cutting CEO’s stipends and pensions is of course out of the question. A Starmer government will of course create another flood of bureaucratic measures to ‘exempt Teh Poor’. That’s another workload for NHS managers who need another justification for their well-remunerated existence. 

And so, for the record, I’ll mention two essays or ‘reports’ from the weekend editions. The Times had a hair-raising report on Saturday, full of shining proposals – for wimmin:

“Professor Dame Lesley Regan has spent her life caring for women in a health service built around the needs of men. “Women have not had a good deal,” she says. “Our healthcare systems are failing them because NHS services are not designed to meet women’s day-to-day needs.” The gynaecologist, 66, is the government’s first women’s health ambassador, tasked with implementing a ten-year strategy promising to “right the wrongs” of decades of institutional sexism.” (link, paywalled)

Words simply fail me! No, there’s no explanation of how the NHS ‘services’ are ‘designed’ for men. As for ‘institutional sexism’: aren’t there more female GPs than ever? Isn’t that ‘institutional sexism’? The ‘ambassador’ proposes to create ‘a new network of women’s health hubs’, providing “one-stop shops” for smear tests, mammograms, HRT, contraception and sexual health checks.” (link, paywalled). Forget the ‘staffing crisis’, forget the institutionalised ‘lack of money’: wimmins’ needs must come first! Next, there’s Ms Bryony Gordon writing in the DT

“At last, doctors in England will be given mandatory training to better treat female medical conditions under wider plans to improve women’s health. This is long overdue. And some subjects touch a nerve. The menopause and mental health is clearly one of them.” (paywalled link)

Clearly, men do not suffer from mental health problems and they don’t have other health issues either. Don’t mention that it’s females cluttering up GP surgeries – that would be sexist. In any case, the men are generally ‘old and white’, so they can just suck it up.

As for ‘high tech’ being the shiny new solution, I leave you with a jaw-dropping news item in The Times: ”Women’s health apps accused of sharing sensitive personal data” (link, paywalled). (Apologies, dear gentlemen readers – get used to more reports on this ‘female health item’ in future!) These apps ‘track menstrual periods’ – because ‘modern woman’ cannot possibly use pen and a paper diary, only an app will do. One wonders how women past and present managed to survive without an app! Obviously, this is blatant sexism – apps creators are generally male.

Here’s my prediction: the NHS will dominate the ‘Tory race’ – and it’ll be spun as a ‘female issue’. Sunak better get out now … and gentlemen better accept that in the new, female NHS they’ll be disregarded and discarded. After all, that’s not sexist.



 

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