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If I had relied on the NHS, I would be dead now

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    If I had relied on the NHS, I would be dead now

    Should these lovies who voted for the New Lie be allowed to pay their way out of troubles that they helped create?

    http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/hea...icle322853.ece

    A leading British businesswoman has claimed that if she had not used her own money to pay for private nurses to supplement NHS care, she may not have survived a horrific car accident last year.

    Martha Lane Fox, who founded the travel website lastminute.com and whose name became synonymous with the dot.com boom at the turn of the Millennium, criticised the "huge layer of unnecessary bureaucracy" that she observed in the NHS and revealed she paid for her own nurses because the staff in the intensive care unit were so under-resourced.

    Ms Fox, who stepped down from lastminute.com two years ago, suffered severe injuries in a car accident while on holiday in Morocco on 2 May last year.

    After the accident, she was taken to Rabat and then privately flown home to one of Britain's leading teaching hospitals, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where she says that doctors saved her life.

    She left hospital in April this year but requires constant physiotherapy and has only just stopped using her wheelchair. Her experiences have left her reflecting on what she claims is the mismanagement of the NHS which she blames on Labour.

    In an interview with The Independent, she said: "I'm lucky ... I had my own private nurses in addition to the NHS nurses. I had to have carers looking after me all the time because there was a stage when I couldn't lift any limbs and had to ring a bell to have a sip of water and they were just far too stretched."

    She added: "But even then there seemed to be two managers to every nurse. There seems to have been added a huge layer of unnecessary bureaucracy ... I voted Labour but it seems something's got lost along the way.
    "I constantly think that if I had no money I would have been in hospital six months longer because I have had private care at home for a long time. I would have physio once or twice a week which I would have had to get to and from myself. I think my progress of recovery if I'm lucky will be a couple of years. If I hadn't had cash to help me I think it could have been anything between two and five years, if I had made it. If I made it, and I mean that with all seriousness."

    She acknowledged that "getting me from the accident was absolutely critical". But she added: "I needed round-the-clock care that I provided of my own in addition to the job the nurses were doing and that was through no fault of the nurses.

    "Many of them were fantastic and I owe them an enormous debt but I was just so ill and so infected very often and so unable to do a single thing for myself."

    She said it is only since she has been able to collect her thoughts that she came to the conclusion. "I'm constantly staggered by the dedication of the frontline of the NHS. I was in an NHS hospital initially, my life was saved by an A&E trauma unit in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

    "And the team there were fantastic ... but the lack of resources they had and the lack of, what seemed to me, power to nurses who are dealing with stuff every day, something's gone screwy. They are pumping all this money into the NHS and yet it doesn't seem to be getting to the people that need it.

    "There's a whole big chunk in the middle of the NHS that needs to be re-evaluated."
    Insanity: repeating the same actions, but expecting different results.
    threadeds website, and here's my blog.

    #2
    I do love to blame NL for everything, and after three terms they should have improved things - their failures in every bloody area you can think of, health, education, crime, immigration is almost total.

    But I think all this ridiculous cost centre stuff with numerous tiers of management was initially largely a Tory invention. Free market principles are by far the best if there is real incentive to provide the best service to customers. That's why it works. Phony pseudo free markets when there is no incentive are worse than old fashioned state services.

    Not surprisingly we get even more phony pseudo free market under NL, the state employees who do FA useful multiply by the hour, the rest of them who once used to do a useful job are tied up in endless administration to no good end.
    bloggoth

    If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'
    John Wayne (My guru, not to be confused with my beloved prophet Jeremy Clarkson)

    Comment


      #3
      ...what a load of exagerated codswollop.

      What she means is there wasn't a nurse on hand to hand her a cola or to water the flowers on the bedside table.
      I'm alright Jack

      Comment


        #4
        She's right though, the NHS is in shambles in terms of front-line resources... a bit like the police, I'd say.

        I am quite prepared to blame Labour, not that it is necessarily their fault, but they claimed they'd improve it and if they have (I haven't know the NHS under the Tories) then it must have been catastrophic before.

        Not that I always subscribe to the "the nurses are fantastic blablabla" maybe some of them are but I'd guess it is the same as in any civil service, some are crap some are good. However it is not their fault, that is true, that there are not enough of them and too many useless managers.

        Incidentally there was a good episode of Spooks yesterday about an Abramovich clone to take over the NHS so he could anihilate Britain!
        Some would argue we don't need a mad Russian megalomaniac to do this and are quite able to do it ourselves thank you very much
        Chico, what time is it?

        Comment


          #5
          She's pretty much talking out her bottom. I had a serious accident during the Tory regime and spent 5 months in hospital and saw the same thing. At the same time both the Falklands war soldiers who had the same injuries were up and out of hospital months before me and I recall Barry Sheene having a big accident but if you have money or a Tory backer then you were up and about in no time. The Tories were one of the reasons that I left the country and you're seeing their legacy still today.
          Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

          Comment


            #6
            Russians in the NHS

            Yeah I saw that,

            Our eveil government selling off the NHS to the Russian oligarch.

            That stuff he had that he injected people with to give them a chemical lobotomy to wip out their memory was scary.

            We really need someone to run amok in the house of commons with a syringe of that stuff

            Wiping the minds of browny,bliar and 2jags would imporve govt perfomance to no end.
            There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think

            Comment


              #7
              She should have let the man drive then there wouldn't have been a problem...

              Older and ...well, just older!!

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by darmstadt
                The Tories were one of the reasons that I left the country and you're seeing their legacy still today.
                For how many more decades will people blame the tories for the current state of the country?

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by darmstadt
                  She's pretty much talking out her bottom. I had a serious accident during the Tory regime and spent 5 months in hospital and saw the same thing. At the same time both the Falklands war soldiers who had the same injuries were up and out of hospital months before me and I recall Barry Sheene having a big accident but if you have money or a Tory backer then you were up and about in no time. The Tories were one of the reasons that I left the country and you're seeing their legacy still today.

                  I think you will find any political party would have done the same..Prioritise.

                  You need the soldiers to shoot more Argentinians....
                  Barry Sheene always looked funny falling off his bike at 180mph (I know I met him) and that's waht he lived for.......
                  And you were needed for what?.........
                  Lets face it Jimmy Crankie would have got out before you

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by PerlOfWisdom
                    For how many more decades will people blame the tories for the current state of the country?
                    Traditional Tory supporters will always blame wilson, callaghan and the Winter of Discontent for the disasterous 70's; traditional labour supporters will always blame Thatcher for the 80's.

                    However, be comforted in the knowledge that EVERYONE will blame blair and his incompentent cohorts for the mess during 1997 - 2009.
                    If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.

                    Comment

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