One Database You CAN Opt Out Of - NHS Summary Care

Kept quiet by the state, of course, but here's one database you can request an opt-out from: the Summary Care Record. There's a link to a printable form at the bottom of this page.

Bloody Blears And The Whole Bloody Lot

A waste of time and resources; A Very British Dude headbuts a van while cycling and finds himself given the runaround by the NHS.

Beware the new political class intake: Don Paskini offers some advice to Labour's 'new' generation; although it should apply to all of them. This was something I alluded to in an earlier post. The poison of a professional political class.

That bloody Blears woman again. And a government audibly collapsing around us.

NHS £350m On Consultants, Bloody Consultants

'The NHS spent £350m on external management consultants in the last financial year, according to an RCN survey.' Read all about it. HT NHS Blog Doctor.

No wonder the NHS is in such good condition.

Face Punch Innovation Spawn Labour Slime

Bra Boss Withdraws Support For labour: Labour are now officially a bunch of sagging tits

A punch in the face for Darzi, Labour's Apparatchik In Chief For Fucking The NHS, who has declared we need to improve efficiency within the service by more 'innovation'. No, we fucking don't. We don't need 'innovation' in anything; we need common sense and honesty. Further efficiencies could be secured by abolishing all quangos and associated semi-governmental cash drains, including Darzi himself. The Curmudgeon delivers his response.

A punch in the face and a kick in the knackers for Gordon Brown, Prime Mentalist, Spawn of the Manse, Bottler in Chief - everyone else is calling for signatures on the online petition, so why shouldn't I? - sign the petition for the twat to resign.

A punch in the face for the Labour Party: another defection (followed by bilious reactions), at Labourhhome. The party ceased to be Labour in any form once Blair, Brown, Mandelson and the others got hold of it after John Smith died. Those in the party who think it can be rescued and returned to its roots are deluded. It's a sack of poison, a piece of earth scorched and ploughed with salt. It's like some creature from a horror movie - everything it touches turns to filth and slime.

Are the others any better? Unfortunately not a lot. British politics is run by a rancid bunch of professional politicos who're told what to do by another bunch of rancid politicos in the EU. So a punch in the face for the lot of them as well.

And another punch in the face for the Spawn, as his panic measure to defuse the MPs' expenses row blows up in his his flabby face.

And a punch in the face for Mandelson, just because I feel like it.

Leaders, Bleeders And Balls

Set off by NHS Blog Doctor's rant against the excremental Balls

All children's services chiefs will be sent for compulsory training in the realities of frontline social work under plans to drive up standards in child protection to be announced today.

A course will be created at the National College for School Leadership to ensure that senior managers are aware of the pressures their staff are under, and are able to do more to address chronic problems of recruitment and retention. (The Times)

- I unearthed the following:

The National College for School Leadership (note leadership, not teaching, God forbid) is an NDPB. That is, a Non departmental Public Body, ie government-funded cash-drain (a quango, in other words).

Too many bloody leaders. It's like Common Purpose. We don't need any more of the useless, self-important bastards, especially unelected ones. The elected ones are bad enough.

Here's the page from the department of can't stop fiddling (Children, Families and Schools), listing NDPBs and similar cash drains. The Childrens' Workforce Development Council is a good one (and nothing about encouraging employers to shove children up chimneys).

NHS Labourspeak Obvious Constitution Bollocks

The government have launched their NHS 'Constitution', presumably because they think the rest of us are too dim to understand what's meant by the words 'national', 'health' and 'service'.

I read the first 'principle' and gave up when I got to the third sentence because the pain in my sides was too great:

The NHS provides a comprehensive service, available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief. [Usual self-righteous Labour waffle that states the obvious.] It has a duty to each and every individual that it serves and must respect their human rights. [That would be the rights they're so busy tearing up elsewhere, would it?] At the same time, it has a wider social duty to promote equality through the services it provides and to pay particular attention to groups or sections of society where improvements in health and life expectancy are not keeping pace with the rest of the population.

No, it doesn't have the duty to promote equality or any such ideological claptrap. It's about looking after us when we're sick. Typically, the government can't tell the difference between providing medical services and acting as a propaganda department for New Labour.

New Labour is More than just a Pain in the Arse

This morning I received a letter from my dentist telling me my next appointment in October (made months ago after my last check-up) has now been cancelled and moved to May 2009. A six month extra wait will make it a year between check-ups. When I spoke to the receptionist she said it was down to the fact that two of their dentists had left and they had been unable to find replacements.

This cancelling and postponing of appointments has become more frequent over the last four or five years. As has the change in dentists. Twenty years ago, when I moved to Lincoln, I had no problem in registering with a dentist and seeing him or her every six months. Ten years ago I had no problems registering with a new practice after my previous dentist upped sticks and vanished. In the last five years, the situation has deteriorated.

The government would have us believe that they are improving NHS dental services, especially since they introduced new contracts back in 2006. In Lincolnshire things have got worse, because it's big and rural - travel is expensive and public transport almost non-existent. When the new contracts came in dentists left the system in droves. I seem to recall that the then minister in charge (possibly Rosie Winterton - another characterless non-entity from the political classes) claiming it would all be a success, despite the fact that something like 10% of dentists had quit the NHS.

Looking at the newly-released figures from the NHS itself, it appears that despite the fact that 'the number of dentists has increased in every SHA between 2006/07 and 2007/08' and 'that in England, the population per dentist has decreased between 2006/07 and 2007/08 decreasing from 2,518 to 2,439', it is now becoming almost impossible to register with an NHS dentist. Even when you are registered, your troubles still aren't over - you may end up waiting a whole year for an appointment.

It's no wonder that millions of people - adults and children - are not going to a dentist at all. Again, the government's own figures show this decline: 10 million fewer adults saw a dentist in the 24 months up to March 2008 than in the two years leading up to March 2007; and 198,000 fewer children for the same periods. Mind you, the NHS managed to increase its revenue from those patients by £56 million. Pay more, get less is New Labour's strategy.

The system isn't working properly and it's falling apart.