General Election June 8th

[CitizenTID]

Wish Diane Abbott all the best in recovering her health. Would be better for everyone if she stepped aside from that particular role permanently rather than temporarily.

 

[BigJoe#1]

There will be no Nurses unless we start paying them correctly, especially as they want to stop EU Nurses filling the gap. The increased needs of the elderly, due to inept social care in the community means that the NHS will start to fail. No doubt the excuse to privatise it, as shareholders will run it more efficiently, just like the other privatised utilities. Not.

Does anyone have any actual statistics about the number of Nurses that have come to the UK from the EU and are contributing to the NHS and society?

My experience is there are very few skilled trained nurses coming in from the EU, the Nurses that come here are mainly from the far east places such as Singapore, Sri Lanka etc.

The majority of people I encounter in a hospital that are from the EU are generally in the lesser skilled jobs such as carers and care assistants. This is no way denigrating the work, the essential work, they do its just an observation and I think one that should be noted.

 

[pirate]

I am not sure I agree with they above, but in any event, the reality is that most people are greedy. Irrespective of political allegiances.

It's apparently dreadful to be well off and to wish to do the best for yourself and your family. But if you are less well off, this is perfectly fine, admirable even.

Just look at the 10,000 who turned up in Gateshead. What are they campaigning for? More money for themselves. Directly in terms of pay and pay rises, and indirectly in terms of benefits - schools, policing, NHS etc - that they want other people to pay for.

I wonder how many of the 10,000 were very wealthy or even moderately wealthy and welcoming paying more tax out of principle? If it's more than 1% of the crowd, I'd be astonished. 99% are there to seek a better deal for themselves, and that is their prime motivation. Not some noble egalitarian principle.

I have been to labour party rallies (granted not the one in gateshead) and a Labour government would mean I pay more tax.
I know lots of people in the same boat.
I would be astonished if the figure was as low as 1%.

If we want a fair society then it costs money and the nature of the free market means that the more successful get to pay more for that fair society, because the more successful have more money.
If you dont want a fair society then basically you are of the opinion that the rich are rich because they deserve to be and the poor are poor because they deserve to be and when I raised that opinion before people got very upset.

 

[jonmcity]

Not disagreeing with any of what you post but, the east coast train line is run by Virgin/Stagecoach and has been since March 2015. There was absolutely no need for it to go 'private' but sadly, in the UK at least, ideology will always trump common sense, whoever is in power!

Yes but in the short time it was owned by the nation it made £209 million of profit a year for the exchequer.

 

[worsleyweb]

Wish Diane Abbott all the best in recovering her health. Would be better for everyone if she stepped aside from that particular role permanently rather than temporarily.

She has clearely been moved to one side as she is a car crash.

 

[BigJoe#1]

She has clearely been moved to one side as she is a car crash.

Agree totally, thing is, the phrase about bolting horses and slamming stable doors springs to mind here. Another illustration of and inept and an incompetent leader me thinks.

 

[jonmcity]

Does anyone have any actual statistics about the number of Nurses that have come to the UK from the EU and are contributing to the NHS and society?

My experience is there are very few skilled trained nurses coming in from the EU, the Nurses that come here are mainly from the far east places such as Singapore, Sri Lanka etc.

The majority of people I encounter in a hospital that are from the EU are generally in the lesser skilled jobs such as carers and care assistants. This is no way denigrating the work, the essential work, they do its just an observation and I think one that should be noted.

EU immigrants make up about 5% of English NHS staff and about 5% of the English population, according to the best available data. Across the UK, EU immigrants make up 10% of registered doctors and 4% of registered nurses. Immigrants from outside the EU make up larger proportions. Restrictions on non-EU immigrants have affected NHS recruitment, suggesting that the same could happen if there were limits on EU immigration. However, these restrictions did not trigger a process of existing healthcare workers fleeing the UK.
55,000 out of the 1.2 million staff in the English NHS are citizens of other EU countries, according to the English Health Service’s Electronic Staff Record. This includes doctors; nurses; other professionals like paramedics and pharmacists; support workers providing care; and administrative staff.

Assuming that the staff who were not asked or did not fill out this field had a similar mix of nationalities to those who did, this implies about 5% of NHS trust staff are citizens of another EU country – compared to around 5% of the population of England.

 

[CitizenTID]

She has clearely been moved to one side as she is a car crash.

Possibly. I do find it believable because she's been dipping out of things for quite a while due to it.

I wouldn't put it past some type of characters to use it as their excuse card regularly though, when they can't face the heat for example.

 

[Don Karleone]

This did make me chuckle I must admit.

 

[NeilYoungIsBack]

Just on railways, there's a very powerful graph showing the trend for passenger kilometres carried by the GB rail system by 1947. Unfortunately I don't know how to paste in a chart, but the upshot is that in 1947 total passenger kms was 37.0 million, and by 1997 it was 34.1 million. In no year between 1947 and 1997 did it reach 37 million.

However, since 1997 the use of the rail system has more or less doubled, reaching 65.0 million passenger km in 2016.

The point is I am not sure where the idea has come from that privatisation of rail has been such as fiasco, as it seems to have found a way to grow passenger travel in a way that BR did not.

The data is from the ORR and is here:

Calendar year Total passenger kilometres
1947 37.0
1948 34.2
1949 34.0
1950 32.5
1951 33.5
1952 33.3
1953 33.5
1954 33.3
1955 32.7
1956 34.0
1957 36.4
1958 35.0
1959 35.8
1960 34.7
1961 33.9
1962 31.8
1963 31.5
1964 32.0
1965 30.1
1966 29.7
1967 29.1
1968 28.7
1969 29.6
1970 30.4
1971 30.1
1972 28.3
1973 29.8
1974 30.9
1975 30.3
1976 28.6
1977 29.3
1978 30.7
1979 32.0
1980 30.3
1981 29.7
1982 27.2
1983 29.5
1984 29.8
1985 29.7
1986 30.9
1987 31.7
1988 34.0
1989 33.5
1990 33.7
1991 32.1
1992 32.0
1993 30.6
1994 28.8
1995 29.7
1996 31.7
1997 34.1
1998 35.7
1999 37.9
2000 39.0
2001 38.6
2002 39.3
2003 40.4
2004 41.7
2005 42.7
2006 45.2
2007 48.3
2008 50.6
2009 50.4
2010 53.3
2011 55.9
2012 58.1
2013 59.1
2014 61.8
2015 63.6
2016 (p) 65.0