A lack of government action has turned the GP shortage into a vicious cycle: the scarcity worsens working conditions for existing staff, leading to burnout and more retiring early or joining private providers.
If Boris Johnson bitterly regrets what happened in care homes then he should bring them under the NHS, fund social care properly and provide a social care settlement for the UK. Now.
I’ve written to the Chairs of all RCGP Faculties with Sir Sam Everington because of the serious questions that remain about Council’s decision on assisted dying. All GPs should be concerned about how this was handled 1/4
Graduates from outside the UK now make up the majority of new doctors in the NHS. Is this what they have to look forward to or can we fight for a different narrative? We shouldn’t have to put up with this. And we should call it by it’s name.
#Racism
This is heartbreaking. A specialist who has dedicated his life to the NHS is reduced to tears because of racist abuse he has faced. This country is a shambles. We’ve pandered to racists for so long, why should any of us want to stay?
The UK is a very rich country. We can afford for kids not to go hungry during school holidays and for our grandparents not to freeze in winter. It is time to focus on making the slices fairer, taking more away from those at the very top and sharing it out.
@UM_UCU
Ask who made the decision, what thought process led to to this solution and why despite being challenged at Senate for previous decision making they still thought of fencing in students
Listen to this outstanding speech by David Lammy. I wish more politicians would call out racism like this. This would not be happening if those affected were not ethnic minorities.
Electrifying, devastating criticism from David Lammy. He is right to say that the "hostile environment" created by the Home Office has been a shameful, deliberate creation of Theresa May herself.
#Windrush
I’m standing for election to the RCGP Council (2024). Can I ask GP colleagues to consider voting for me. Details will be sent by RCGP. Ballot opens today and close on 12/9/2023. Biography on RCGP website
Millionaires writing in
@Times
on how to raise taxes. Start by aligning capital gains tax with income tax, generating £14 billion a year. A progressive wealth tax starting at 2 per cent for those with more than £3.6 million would generate nearly £44 billion a year in the UK.
Covid-19: Government is criticised for “scandalous” £10bn spent on test and trace programme | The BMJ. Absolutely unbelievable. If a fraction of that was spent on public health preparedness we would never have been in this situation!
#NoCapitulation
. DB in proposal would be upto £42000 (was £55000). So all grade 6 staff are still in DB, top of grade 7 would have 14.5% in DC (currently not in DC), top of grade 8 (senior lecturer) would have 31% in DC (currently 9%). This is undermining pensions
@UM_UCU
@ucu
Diane Reay:
#CradleToGrave
Only 60% of university students end up in graduate jobs. 1% of Oxbridge Graduates on free school meals. Oxbridge still only has 1% black British students and assets of over £294,000 per student compared to £292 at Bournemouth. Inequality rules.
Excellent analysis of crisis engulfing HE. It will all end in tears when student fees are capped and they won’t have the funds to pay for their vanity capital projects. Our ‘leaders’ will leave with gold plated pensions having bankrupted the rest of us
Just published
If a regulator with parliamentary authority to maintain professional standards systematically disadvantages a group of doctors simply because they are not white, it is not fit for purpose
“Football doesn’t make society, it reflects it. The game is a small part of a much bigger British industry of servicing, laundering and enabling dirty money that is so large these days as to appear almost respectable.”
‘Don’t judge the book by its cover’- Clinicians and charities speak out about the positive role DNACPR conversations can play in providing good care – BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care
Priti Patel’s own parents left persecution in Uganda to come here. In 1972, Ted Heath agreed to take in 28,000 Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin. 28,000 in one year, despite the protests of Enoch Powell.
And the daughter of that generation does them a dishonour.
Getting some basic facts right on the NHS. 1. Missed appointments do not cost the NHS millions 2. NHS is significantly under funded compared to most European health care systems (based on per capita spend and not % of GDP)
Manchester University boss speaks out after 'hardest term ever' .... but many said they would quite like a fence! Please! Great example of a non- apology.
@UM_UCU
@OfficialUoM
It was also a day for those watching PMQs to ask themselves what they had done to deserve a leader who is visibly falling apart week on week. There was never anything very clever about Boris: now there isn’t even anything funny
Women are not paid less because they are less educated, less motivated, less ambitious, less willing to ask for more money, weaker. They are paid less because hostile men, and the institutions they create, keep finding ways to frustrate gender inequality
So HEC rejected ACAS offer. UUK have failed to judge the public mood and the resolve of students and staff to see this through. Let’s keep pushing. The system is corrupt and we need to change the terms of engagement.
#NoCapitulation
#USSstrikes
@UM_UCU
@ucu
It’s crazy to just rely on vaccinations. We need to use the time to get test and trace working. Understand how to use antibody testing and other rapid tests. Make proper use of the NHS App. Use Public Health and General Practice to its full potential. Plus border controls.
All of us at Pulse are truly saddened that
@KailashChandOBE
has died this evening. Our long-term blogger and friend, a tireless campaigner for justice, and a staunch defender of general practice and the NHS - his legacy will live on. Rest in peace, Kailash
This is the problem with levelling up. ‘Allocations in 2021 from the levelling-up fund added up to £32 per person in the north of England. That compares with a £413 per person drop in council spending on services during the austerity decade’. Tories and austerity!
We are hurtling backwards to the time when only the rich could be politicians, towards a pimped-up feudal system where any notion of public service is being dumped on from great heights. Vintage Moore. Says it as it is.
There was a seriousness to Corbyn that will always be beyond Johnson. There have been more intelligent sounds coming out of my arse than from the prime minister’s mouth.
The innocent have paid a high price for the Post Office scandal. The guilty have not. A national scandal. Am I the only person wandering why so many were ethnic minorities and did this have any bearing on what happened.
Independent investigation into the causes of the Windrush scandal published last year, found that the Home Office had displayed “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness” on race issues, “consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism”. Says it all.
#USSballot
Let’s pause, think, read. Let us not attack each other. We got this far because we were united. It’s not an easy decision. We have to consider tactics, what’s been offered and what might be achieved.
@ucu
@UM_UCU
. It was never going to be easy.
I think we should be moving as fast as possible to try to encourage doctor-management, as well as academic management of our universities. Now there’s a surprise.
We have world class universities because we have world class staff. They are being increasingly exploited - short term contracts, pension cuts and being micro- managed. Nothing to do with highly paid vice-chancellors.
Not for me to comment on individual salaries. But we have more world-class universities than any another country bar America. Could be if we want to stay that way we need to pay vice-chancellors world-class salaries?
Countries have underlying health conditions too, easily preyed on by a virus. In the UK those chronic ailments include a government of bluffers, a society deformed by inequality and a public sector drained of both cash and confidence
Structural racism is a fundamental cause and driver of ethnic disparities in health - Debunking the findings of the government report on race disparities.
It now became clear she saw that her main asset was to be able to talk bullshit. Though not particularly convincingly. Dido has the priceless asset of being able to fail upwards.
“Some things won’t go away...racism is very much part of the cultural DNA of this country, and has been from imperial times. In spite of the progress that we have made...It is something we have to contend with in our everyday lives.”
A system under pressure with inadequate capacity to meet the health needs of the population adversely affecting quality of care. Unsustainable workload burdens on staff lead to stress and burnout and affect recruitment and retention. Reality of the NHS.
I’ve seen 30 years of process driven inertia on tackling discrimination - the problem is that the NHS and the professional bodies don’t believe that racism is the problem. Well said
@parthaskar
Here’s a suggestion. Offer free childcare to all nurses (including those working nights). Create nurse apprenticeships so you don’t need to go to University to become a nurse. Reintroduce bursaries and give them all a 10% pay rise. Simples.
Where are UK trained doctors? The migrant care law and its implications for the NHS–an essay by Julian M Simpson . Outstanding article by my colleague and former PhD student.
Just published
If a regulator with parliamentary authority to maintain professional standards systematically disadvantages a group of doctors simply because they are not white, it is not fit for purpose
Simple and unremarkable vision of what sport can be, which also acted as a rueful and wistful vision of what sport could have been all these years had the game’s administrators and custodians valued women beyond their ability to bear children and serve tea
Boris Johnson's resignation was an act of desperation. He knows the verdict of history is about to come down on him - and bury him. My column for
@nytimes
. Boris Johnson Has Ruined Britain
Outstanding article. You I’ll be surprised with what you read and you will understand the hypocrisy and brutality of the British state. And you will understand why it is never taught in our schools and universities - because it it so terrible and real.
The Observatory has now published the anticipated review calling for radical action on stark ethnic inequalities across healthcare. Some of the key recommendations are highlighted below.
Full report & summary available here:
Trade unions are important in preventing inequality. Between 1937 and 1979, union membership doubled, while the share of income going to the top 1% fell by two-thirds. Between 1979 and 2014, membership of unions halved and the share of income for the richest 1% more than doubled.
‘They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made’. F Scott Fitzgerald
Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker. A fascinating history of Britain’s colonial past and its relationship to the National Trust. Next time you visit a NT property think of this.
This is a consistent finding across so many studies. Yet the GMC as the regulator and the Colleges are bereft of ideas to solve it. Hint. 1. It’s the method of assessment. 2. It’s the exams and the method of assessment. 3. We can create better methods of assessment.
An outstanding and moving profile/ interview of Azeem Rafiq. A lesson on racism -and yes, it’s in the sports pages where recently, some of the best writing on racism can be found.
Official regrets have been too narrowly tailored, the memories too selective, the mendacity too brazen and the callousness too pernicious to see the government’s parsed and partial expressions of remorse as anything other than an insult to our intelligence
‘Under Tony Blair, Labour oversaw one of the largest hikes in NHS spending of the postwar years. Yet its policies starkly failed to deliver.’ Bunkum. Under Labour there were none of these problems. It can be solved and there is a blueprint from 2002.
'We are transforming our university into a place where talent once again feels valued and nurtured’ — Ghent University
@AcademicsUom
Now here’s something radical
Shield some and let others carry on? In the end, either everyone’s health matters or no one matters. Where do we draw the line? The narrative of “them” and “us” is a dangerous one, and the idea that Covid-19 will not impact us all is foolish.
I think as a minimum it should be put to members. They are quite able to decide. Suspend action till then and if we reject it then we are nicely into the exam period for another push. My red line remains DB at the current salary threshold. Nothing less.
#NoCapitulation
@UM_UCU
This is what has come out of the Acas talks between UCU and UUK –
It is going to members this evening. Our higher education committee and branch representatives are meeting tomorrow to consider it.
#USSstrike
Discrimination is an enduring phenomenon. When comparing the findings with those from previous field experiments conducted in Britain (like the one we did)we found no sign of progress for Caribbeans or for South Asians as a whole over the past 50 years. .
Lessons for men who think feminism will destroy them. It is in fact their greatest chance of liberation, since the less women are forced to conform to preconceived notions of femininity, the more space there is within masculinity for them to be themselves
This January, a senior government minister told the Sun of a new rule, coined while out canvassing, that “If you knock on a door and they have books on their shelves, you can be pretty sure these days they’re not voting Tory.”