This is a brief apology for the recent lack of postings on here. The first reason is that I have just had a visit from my son and his newly-pregnant wife who live thousands of miles away and the second is the absolutely amazing news agenda of the last couple of weeks. As one who has closely followed politics since my early teens, I have just been riveted by events. Oh yes, and I spent a couple of days in hospital being tended to by efficient and charming staff, most of whom were Polish.
I hope to return to something like normal this week, I see that the old idea of sitting courts in pubs and suchlike has resurfaced, so perhaps I'll have a look at that..
That'll be licensing law, then.
ReplyDeleteThat's always been a puzzle to me, why the heck the british NHS must hire foreign staff, as opposed to training Brits in adequate numbers. The answer I find online is that with the money it takes to train one nurse in the UK, you hire three trained abroad. I suppose so, but I also suppose that paying their wages is only one of the costs of having three more people settle there. Foreing nurses, f.i., are due to have their own health concerns at times, so the NHS ends up having four people to look after instead one every time it elects to hire the three foreing nurses instead of training a british one. Then there's housing, transports, school for the children and all the things in short supply that the Brits blame on foreigners. They'd better blame it on whomever's in charge of making ends meet. There 's something blithely unreal in the way costs are counted; it seems noone bothers with looking at the whole picture, not just the disboursment in the single department. It's the same here. Now here they are all for reducing the number of public offices, as a way of cutting costs. None of these wisemen considering the long term effects it will have on our beautiful hundred cities, when firms decide to move nearer the administrative centres and people to move nearer their jobs, so turning the very gold of this country into an unmanageable maintainance problem, and the few larger cities into a nightmare of housing and services shortage. Howling barking lunatics.
ReplyDeleteShort term economics is the answer. Healthcare has effectively been outsourced, just like IT, to lower cost countries. Benefits for the companies and customers are lower costs (including no training).
DeleteBenefits for the donor countries like India and the Philippines are income from the workers abroad to support families etc.
Potential losers are UK workers, in job opportunities and downward pressure on wages.
As far as I see increased outsourcing and automation, with no measures to change the local job market show the UK, along with many other countries, have no long term industrial strategy. Is the future cheap goods and services for a largely poor & unemployed population?
Out of curiosity, how do you think most JPs voted? Most police officers i know (I am a DC) voted 'out' which surprised me. The main factor was a desire to be able to deport their suspects more easily (none UK ones obviously).
ReplyDeleteYes I did notice you had been quiet but everyone is entitled to quality family time and I am glad that you have had some of that as well. I am led to believe the powers that be want to reduce magistrate numbers to about 12,000 as we are told there just isn't the work coming through the system. And has anyone noticed the job adverts for Deputy District Judges (MC)? Enough ssaid on that topic but not a word from the Magistrates' Association! Or have I missed it?
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the upcoming grandchild and I am oozing envy as my son shows no sign of providing me with one!
ReplyDeleteOne of the many worries I have is the number of halfwits who think voting Brexit means that the Poles/Romanians/whichever will be gone by a fortnight next Thursday. It does not take half a brain to see that those already here - and probably those who arrive before the formal end of our membership - will be allowed to stay as long as they live lawfully which most of them do.
Good to have you back, BS!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear about your time with you family.
Sorry to hear about your disappointment with the referendum. Democracy is jolly awful sometimes.
Sorry to hear that you may have to visit a "pub". I hear they are full of working class people, heavens!
Many of the nurses imported to the NHS are from places like he Philipines. Can someone explain the moral justification in taking trained nurses from third world countries, and employing them here? Those countries pay to train the nurses they need, then we steal them.
ReplyDeleteI do not look to this site for political comments, but those relating purely to the magistracy and the nonsense imposed on us from on high.
ReplyDeleteCome off it, Cyndy. That was one of the arguments used by the East German Government to justify the Berlin Wall and the minefields on the inner-German frontier: You in the West have no business stealing our doctors and nurses and engineers. People are not property.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Why not let third world countries train nurses, often with our help, because it is cheaper t train nurses there, and then attract them to work here, because they get paud more?
ReplyDeleteWe are doing that instead of paying to train people in this country. Do you think failing to train in this country because we can recruit from other third world countries, is morally justified?
I rather suspect that those recruited would argue that it was their right to earn as much as their training will bear. What right does anyone have to stop them working where there is a need?
ReplyDeleteI would certainly like to see more training here but I see nothing immoral in recruiting abroad. I repeat the German reference (which you ignore): before the Wall the West Germans made East German professionals who had gone West through Berlin welcome and after the Wall fell the process resumed.
ReplyDeleteIn fact it began when the Hungarians opened the Austrian frontier: there was a district in East Germany where at the beginning of 1989 there were four vets available to the collective farms and by the time the East Germans closed the frontier to Czechoslovakia at the end of September there was one, and he was 63 and would be allowed to go at 65 because pensioners were allowed to go and be a burden on the West Germans instead.
Don't blame the vets or the West Germans now; don't blame the nurses or our Government now. People will go where the living is.
I have also just spent time in an NHS hospital being treated quickly and efficiently by a number of staff, many of whom are from who knows and who cares where but are very competent. Why not Brits? Because there aren't enough qualified Brits available, or they prefer to go into practise abroad (is this what's called irony?). Certainly, they have taken no jobs from any of the locals. I am very grateful that they choose to work in our NHS.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, as a Brit who lives in "Europe", I am not entitled to free treatment from the NHS. I was aware of this, but having gone through the administrative procedure - not easy with a sore head - I now understand it better. I am now even more angry at those who claimed that foreigners were overwhelming our NHS both as employees, doctors, nurses, as well as "health tourists" - these people lied through their teeth. If I as a British person, who still has NI and NHS numbers, who is clearly still on the system, cannot just roll up and get treatment for free, then the xenophobes' claims were false. I have no objection to this - I have health insurance as it is compulsory where I live in an EU country. But I object deeply to the wholesale dishonesty employed in the EU referendum by the Brexit faction, especially regarding the legal aspects, and the 'promised' diversion of 350 million quid to the NHS. Frankly I believe that we're a decent country and spending a few quid healing 'foreigners' who fall ill while they're here (or rather, there, as I'm not in the UK) exemplifies that decency.
At least our new PM has withdrawn her foolish claim to withdraw from the ECHR - I believe that this is a profound force for good in our criminal justice system, and that failures in that system, as described and alluded to so often in this blog, and from what I hear from friends within that system - I am a lawyer, but my field of law is as far as one could be from English criminal law - the blame for its failures, and responsibilioty for improvement, lie entirely at the door of an informed and intelligent government and electorate - which judging from the Brexit debacle, especially the shameful media performance, are sorely lacking in the UK.
Sorry for the rant, touched a nerve, inside said sore head.
Just wanted to know if the blog is still active. Worried about you Bystander.
ReplyDeleteCome on you guys. Please get this blog going again !
ReplyDeleteNo posts since 3rd July...... has the whole team got personal issues?
ReplyDelete