Britain is facing a shortage of fully qualified surgeons as more than a million elective operations in which trainees would have gained vital experience have been “lost” to the pandemic, The Telegraph can disclose.
The monthly number of elective operations involving trainees is down by more than 50 per cent in some specialties compared to pre-Covid levels, according to the latest data seen by the Telegraph.
Everything does have costs. Maybe the benefits outweigh them, maybe they don’t. But as far as we know the only person around that Cabinet table who actually asked that most important question – “How much will this cost?” – was Jesse Norman. Who currently enjoys life on the backbenches.
Hmm……
Never forget that politicians are at number 4 of St Miltons ‘Four Ways of spending money’.
How much will this cost is a question that only needs asking once, providing a satisfactory answer is forthcoming.
If not, it needs asking again and again. Did anyone, even from the back benches?
Unanimity among 634 argumentative types, that the costs didn’t matter. It beggars belief.
Can I take it that the daft EU laws limiting working hours no longer apply? If so we can return to the system of junior hospital docs working long hours to master their skills. We can pay them a sweetener, raised by cutting the pay of GPs as a mark of displeasure at their misbehaviour during the pandemic. Combined with halving teachers’ pay that should be quite a bit of moolah available.
This is a stroke of bureaucratic genius,
Get the senior doctors, the ones who can train the junior doctors, to retire early by taxing their pensions at >100% at the same time as you create a training backlog among the juniors.
Only a government could fuck anything up to this degree without personal and financial consequences for those responsible.
I want to join the Fourth Reich! Sound political commentary there, sir!
And on top of what BitFR says the gov is going to sack a load of doctors and nurses because they won’t take a vaccine they don’t need.
Ah, but in a fair and equitable world would everything have a cost?
I’m sure they will be able to complete their training on Zoom.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Only a government could fuck anything up to this degree without personal and financial consequences for those responsible.”
Its weird that the State is (in the UK at least) wholly in control of healthcare, from the CEO to the paperclip budget, yet its manifest ability to f*ck everything up is never taken as a reason to get the State out of healthcare……
@dearieme – “the daft EU laws limiting working hours”
You may not care that a doctor making life and death desisions about your healthcase is very sleep-deprived – a condition know to make people make poor decisions – but I think such limits are essential. And, of course, the EU limits have an opt-out.
Jesse Norman was in my experience aand outstanding minister. He is on the back benches apparently because he fell out with Rishi. Which makes me wonder about the latter.