Prospects for Tuesday, 15 January
- 15 Jan 08, 10:34 AM
Robert Morgan is today's programme producer. Here is his early email to the team.
Good morning everyone,
There's quite a bit around this morning. Richard Watson could have a big story which I'll speak more about in the morning meeting. There's obviously Northern Rock's EGM, EMI, food prices, and a possible Uzbek cotton follow up. Is it worth us previewing Michigan? Do come to the meeting armed with great ideas.
Rachel Wright and Neil Drake have a great film which needs a Government response off the back. Are foreign doctors working too many hours in the health service?
In 2004 GPs voted on a new contract. One of the new provisions was the opportunity to opt out of providing "Out of Hours" care. Ninety per cent of doctors voted to take up this new option. Which meant that NHS Primary Care Trusts now had the task of filling doctor's surgeries at nights and weekends. More and more of these shifts are being filled with doctors from throughout the new expanded European Union, especially Poland. Some are even staying in their home country and commuting over at weekends. After all they can earn the same amount in one shift as they can in a whole month in Poland. But does commuting make these doctors too tired to treat patients and who is responsible for them? Rachel Wright made the trip with one Polish doctor to find out.
Playout ideas welcome.
Robert
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Yes, spare us Michigan for the moment [see Editors' Blog] - the coverage from Justin Webb and David Grossman is great, but just focus on quality coverage - we don't need quite the quantity at this early stage in the proceedings.
Until Super Tuesday is out of the way, a lot of the early 'shocks' will remain just that.
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Actually, I don't agree that Michigan should take a back seat. Although the horse-race stuff on US elections isn't always that interesting, the particular response of Michigan to the candidates is, largely because Michigan is in a recession right now (as opposed to just tipping over into one). I for one would be interested to know whether McCain's "face it, the jobs are gone, now we need to find other jobs" schtick goes down better than Mittens's upbeat but content-free message about getting the state back to work.
Just been reading an interesting piece in Salon on this very topic.
(https://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/15/romney_michigan/index1.html)
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Polish doctors are very hardworking and have very high standards. Since they are part of the EU, and are highly competent, what is wrong with them coming to the UK for weekend work, when there is an acute shortage of doctors? What utter rubbish to suggest that a 2 hour 25 minute flight from Warsaw to London is too exhausting and makes a doctor unfit to practice - sounds like pure xenophobia from a few dodgy patients in the UK.
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The professor of media studies at the University of Brighton has had enough of students turning in "banal and mediocre work" and bans Google and Wikipedia.
Tara Brabazon provides her students with a reading list, of books, and expects their work to reference those works, rather than a rehash of a Wikipedia entry or the top five results from Google. To achieve this she has, reportedly, banned her students using search engines and Wikipedia.
next
According to Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool, the Black Death has begun to spread in Africa to new countries.
the World Health Organisation reports about 1,000 to 3,000 plague cases annually, with most in the last five years occurring in Democratic Republic of Congo (which saw hundreds of suspected cases in an outbreak of pneumonic plague in 2006), Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.
They concluded: "We should not overlook the fact that plague has been weaponised throughout history, from catapulting corpses over city walls, to dropping infected fleas from airplanes, to refined modern aerosol formulation."
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THE OPACITY OF 'THE PIPERS' GUILD'
To make sense of the proliferation of 'Think Tanks' in recent times I suggest Newsnight takes a look into the Herculean/Sisyphean task which now faces the Charities Commission given the new 2006 Charities Act. Take a close look at what can now be registered as a charity, and if it's still there (some cases are removed after investigation, so you will have to dig deap), look into how one large IT company with remarkable penetration into our state schools also provides a data custodial service to both schools and used to be the DfES, (the DfCSF?). All in the interest of efficiency and de-regulation and devolution to 'the people' no doubt. Then look into how schools are deluged with 'initiatives' from 'agencies', QUANGOs, NGOs and Think Tanks which appear to be official even though schools have long been locally managed. As I see it, schools are not helped by these spin-adept predators, they're just distracted and financially exploited. This is not devolution of power to the people, it's erosion of the state and predation by the unscrupulous. Without the staff, the regulators (even the FSA) become sinecures..
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Northern Rock must be an item. Interesting to see the Tory spokesman on Monday's edition did his usual evasive act when asked a number of times what was the Tories' solution. I thought the Lib/dem was excellent clear and precise a breath of fresh air from a politician. Still should be leader!!
As for the shareholders, whatever the outcome of the day's meeting I regard shares as a form of gambling. They bet on the "Rock" and lost (no complaining when they were winning) and now have the cheek to expect the taxpayer to bail them out.
I wish my "bookmaker" was as generous. Get it nationalised. They had their chance with the two other so called "rescuers" and wanted "their cake and halfpenny" as we say up North. "Too late"was the cry.
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Miliband has just made a Written Statement on the British Council's refusal to pay their taxes and respect Russian law.
Amazing the lengths that Labour is
apparently going to defend the job
of Council Chairman Neil Kinnock's
son in St Petersburg when British Council is closing libraries and information centres all over the rest of the world including India,
Athens, Jerusalem ....... etc etc
Kinnochio Junior's visa will not be renewed and they've been told to pay their taxes ......
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SOWING THE WIND
In my experience, when vulnerable through old age, young age, fear, pain, confusion, deafness, or a mixture of these, it is reassuring to find the person tending you is of your general 鈥渄emeanour鈥 and speaks your language as their 鈥渇irst鈥. I have 鈥渦ndergone鈥 limited communication with Greek and Polish dentists and watched a relative with a minor stroke, alarmed by the modified pronunciation of a doctor from elsewhere. What successive governments have presided over 鈥 even encouraged 鈥 across the range of healthcare, is ill-considered and unfair on those who must 鈥渢ake what comes鈥. We are all familiar with garbled directions for using our new gadget or assembling a flat-pack, when those instructions have been badly translated from some other language. I find it hard to believe (though not impossible) that an instruction-sheet related to some healthcare issue, would be acceptable in semi-English.
The pretence that 鈥渨e are all the same鈥 in terms of gender, creed, ethnicity, etc is unravelling here, and round the world. No wonder we are reaping whirlwinds.
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Dear Newsnight
i think it is contemptable for doctors to take up training resources in their own country and then rat on it by moving abroad to earn more,
a country may not be able to stop its citizens moving abroad but another country might choose not to employ doctors trained overseas?
countries like the Uk and US have saved billions by using doctors from over countries, it is quite immoral, as for the doctors who do this...
perhaps you could ask whether our country might bar foreign trained doctors and other health professionals?
in terms of supply and demand it does undermine the UK doctors who seem quite willing to charge the NHS whatever they can get away with, which with their bloated PR machine saying how wonderful these people are, this coupled with the fact that we are bascically scared stiff of doctors because, of the power they have over us combined with the behaviour of some of them,they can get away with,
for that reason if the Government decides to try to make us automatically opt in to organ transplants, I will opt out,
sorry i have strong views about all of this
Bob
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The rant posted by Bob Goodall reveals a great deal of ignorance about the NHS and the current situation for Drs in the UK. The mess that is MMC and workforce planning is the nHS is woeful and UK trained Drs are now being forced to seek work elsewhere rather than "charging the NHS what they can get away with". Working hours were changed for both GP's and hospital Drs when new contracts came in in 2004 to combat high working hours and the spectre of tired and thus potentially unsafe drs working on patients. Remember the judges comments on driving tired being the same as driving drunk? the same applies to working tired.
Also, the "bloated PR machine" is anything but bloated. Drs in the UK are now more disparate than ever asa result of the influx of drs from all sorts of backgrounds and as a result their so-called trade union is weaker than it has ever been in terms of collective bargaining. On a collective level, the BMA is, thankfully, still able to provide sensible comment on health issues such as the effect of excessive working hours on performance for all workers, not just DRs. If it were not for the individual representation of groups such as the BMA and the more energetic Remedy, the NHS would now be completely berefct of "expensive" UK trained DRs as NHS managers continue to work to cut corners and costs and look to cheaper foreign medics to meet increasing demand in both primary care and acute settings.
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Polish Doctor. There was no mention of a selection procedure for those docs. Cherry Tree is just for-profit employment agency. Polish medicine is in dire straits: all medical staff is severely underpaid and must work in 2 or 3 jobs in order to make the ends meet.
I come from Anglo-Polish medical family and am fully aware of different approaches in both countries.
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