Today’s pedantic hat goes to…… OK, reprehensible wastage of public money.
It sounds so much like a street in Dhaka.
I wasn’t being a pedant. I worked as a civil servant for many years and was involved in several criminal enquiries.What I did notice is that where the criminal activity was by political donors it was a case of “lessons must be learned” rather than prosecutions. Minor indiscretions from the little people were usually dealt with severely.
I suspect that what you refer to as “reprehensible wastage of public money” is either money spent on things you don’t like or genuine inefficiency as a result of public expenditure being held to a higher level of scrutiny than the private sector is.
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Oh look. More of that creeping NHS privatisation that @Klopptimist assures us isn’t happening
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No time to read the article but in principle (and in my experience which is so loved and respected on this forum) a cheaper and better service provided by the private sector is a good idea.
It’s also a complete fantasy.
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Why is the NHS struggling now please? It currently has the highest level of private sector involvement than ever.
Remember, for every NHS contract there is a NHS team managing that contract. All of that costs money that we might want to spend on actual treatment.
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Wonder how many points Sunak will gain from this?
How long have you got? Anybody on here work high level in the NHS? They’d be better placed than me.
Do you think in a billion years a successful business would use thousands of separate systems (that don’t talk to each other) to process customer data? As a simple example.
For a front line example, if you invested City’s transfer budget per minute, you’d still have issues and problems because they’d just keep increasing the conditions they could treat and increase the value of the drugs they’d authorise. (Not that that’s a bad thing) It’s an endless bottomless pit.
If he’s guilty, throw the book at him.
Would you like to elaborate? I have a lot of experience with NHS Scotland and some with German healthcare so I could contrast and compare.
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Unless I’m wrong (it has been known) there is currently no centralised NHS computer system. My doctor and dentist have no digital connection to any hospital action I have. And vice versa.
Dentists and doctors (GPs) are effectively private businesses and will have their own local systems. There are interfaces between them to pass information between the systems. At least that is how the Scottish NHS works. This is partly why the data produced from NHS Scotland during the pandemic was so valuable because it is possible to match up GP and emergency care data.
In Germany there are compulsory health insurance schemes (lots of them - not just something central like National Insurance). For the most part individual hospitals, surgeries and other health providers will pass information to and from the health insurance provider and the actual hospitals but they don’t pass medical data unless requested. That’s pretty much how private health insurance systems work. This is especially infuriating when, for example, going to an optician and not having the standard health screening for things like glaucoma carried out at the same time.
In terms of having a central database of everything, the last Labour administration tried to do this but made the unfortunate decision to involve private contractors who had very little idea of what they were trying to achieve and the scheme foundered. The reason that the data was held in a distributed manner was simply that the technology didn’t exist to do it when the legacy systems were built. Also, at that time there were concerns about data confidentiality. Given how governments of all colour have turned a blind eye to data protection in the past this is a serious point.
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The government do have forms that if someone who is recieving PIP and is in NHS care for more than 28 days, but does not inform the DWP before/after 28 days and payment of PIP is then suspended/ reclaimed for the day’s going over .
Many will not inform DWP for whatever reason, but the DWP will then contact NHS records to collect the relevant data.
In this regards it’s still not ideal but it’s one of the better functions that kind of works within cross departments of government.
Because it’s gone so well everywhere else.
You just know it’s letter being posted in the background though.
Do you remember waiting 6 months to have a new phone connected? The utilities and rail under the government were a joke.
Revisionist historians incoming.
I think we can find a common ground between leaving everything to the private sector and everything being run by the state.
My position has always been natural monopolies and critical industry controlled by state. Everything leave it to the private sector.
Phone companies are a good example of this. Absolutely no reason for government to run a national telecoms industry. Genuine competition can be introduced to that sector and the consumer can benefit.
The NHS is the opposite. It’s critically important to the country and there is no prospect of competitive practices being introduced.
This seems a sensible way of organising things to me. I’m not a mental communist who thinks the state should supply everything.
But I find it hard to see how anyone could view the last four decades of privatisation being anything other than a disaster. Rail, energy, water, education, NHS. You name it. The private sector have fucked it.
At this point the idea that the private sector can take an industry and run it better, while also keeping prices down and extracting a profit is demonstrable nonsense.
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No, how fucking old are you, 105 or just 5? 
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Tbh it’s a direct call between DWP and hospital admin asking them to confirm hospital dates .