A senior official at the European Commission – the equivalent of the EU’s Government – says the continent must accept that the two necessities of life – food and fuel – have been far too cheap for a generation and to save the planet we must all pay more. Diederik Samsom, Chief of Staff for Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for energy policy, made the comments at a recent meeting of Brussels policymakers. The Times has more.
This spring’s inflation figures for the eurozone are bleak: annual inflation is at more than 7%, and a 44% increase in energy costs is also driving up food prices. A double whammy of the invasion of Ukraine, leading to the phasing out of Russian fossil fuel imports, and Europe’s transition to carbon-free energy have hastened the huge price increases.
Higher energy costs, including a sixfold increase in the cost of gas as an agricultural input, have driven food prices even higher. And the war in Ukraine has disrupted markets in key agricultural commodities, such as wheat and cooking oil, causing knock-on effects all the way along supply chains.
In EU countries the cost of soft wheat has increased 64.6% since March last year and the price of rapeseed, a key oil seed, has risen 77.8%. There are now shortages of sunflower oil, of which 73% of global exports originate in Russia and Ukraine.
The European Commission, which sets key energy policies across the European Union, sees the higher bills as a long overdue and unavoidable reckoning with reality.
Diederik Samsom, Chief of Staff for Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for energy policy, warned that the previous low cost of living came at the expense of the environment and depended on imports of Russia’s fossil fuels.
Samsom admitted that “no one dares to say out loud” to voters that past living standards were unsustainable and that higher prices will be permanent.
“Yes, energy will be much more expensive as of now. Energy was way too cheap for the last 40 years,” he told a recent meeting of Brussels policymakers at the Bruegel think tank, urging governments to confront “taboos”.
“We have profited from it and created enormous wealth at the expense of planet Earth and, as we realise right now, at the expense of geopolitical imbalances [with dependency on Russia]. Both need to be repaired. In order to repair them we need to pay more for energy – and also for food. The two basic needs of life – food and energy – we have paid way too little for in the past 40 years.”
Mr. Samsom appears to earn upwards of £150,000 a year; his boss earns over £200,000 a year. They also have no electorate to face.
Worth reading in full.
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According to migration watch, the UK has added 8 million to the GP list since 2010, and GP’s are still leaving, sort of explains why now, its difficult to get an appointment. The census forms used to do a good job of predicting and planning infrastructure, until they decided to ignore all of that.
While that may be a factor, it doesn’t account for the extreme reluctance to ever see patients, which is what now happens in many GP practices. Nor does it account for the determination to continue with Covid theatre.
Agree about the covid theatre. But no ‘Free’ service, (exceptions are tax payers,) could survive such an onslaught and if GP’s with increased patients can deal with many more via zoom or telephone, why wouldn’t they.
Some things can de done without seeing the patient (e.g. many repeat prescriptions) but other things simply don’t work if done that way – and if they actually cared about providing a decent service they wouldn’t attempt it.
What’s the point of the GP system?
It basically assumes mass health illiteracy.
The question is why do they, and the answer is not immigration. The answer is they can get away with it. They mostly have contempt for patients, and they do as little work as possible for as much money as possible.
You have to be able together through to the surgery in the first place… Very difficult with our practice.
Nor does it account for the determination to continue with Covid theatre.
Absolutely. My GP’s practice is still all plastic screens, masks (“even if fully vaccinated” – hohoho!), signs on every wall, floor and door warning you to keep apart…..they only brought chairs back to the waiting room at the end of 2021, before that you had to stand outside, until you were allowed to stand inside.
Not that I go there much; but I’ve passed the building and looked through the windows.
Same here – I just look as I walk past and it is the same.
You are not even allowed beyond the entry vestibule in my GP surgery and all communication has to be done with hand signals and facial expression – as much as can be achievable when wearing a face mask.
Ludicrous when covid is a total nothing burger
In my practice, the doctors aren’t even in the building… they leave all that kind of thing where they might have to touch someone to nurses, paramedics and HCAs (in no particular order).
That problem is self inflicted by the medical profession, which basically operates as a cartel. The medical industry is pretty much self regulated. They could streamline the training and get more people into the profession, but I don’t think they have any interest in that. Sadly most of the innovation in medicine is done by pharma and tech companies and not so much on the human side
In my recent experience, it seems the GP doctors just do the admin and refer you to someone else who might know, once you’ve run the gauntlet of reception, practice nurse, Minor Injuries and Paramedic…
Since some people here love to talk about immigration: the medical “profession” in Britain prefers to import medics from abroad, some of whom can hardly talk English except if they’re reading from a bullet-pointed card in front of them, let alone actually understand English that’s being spoken to them by a patient, rather than train up British proletarians into being medics, which could be done in a few years for a fraction of the cost of any of the several multi-billion pound “Covid” scams that have been perpetrated since 2020.
Cuba would probably be willing to help.
“… let alone actually understand English that’s being spoken to them by a patient…”
When my wife was training, she was attending a recently arrived doctor of dusky hue when the patient’s mother enquired, in a broad Gloucester accent how the lad’s hearing was… the bemused doctor turned to my wife to ask: “I wasn’t aware that we’d tested his urine?”
The census forms used to do a good job of predicting and planning infrastructure, until they decided to ignore all of that.
This may be a problem globally – or at least in the Anglosphere. I have been fortunate in rarely needing to visit a GP here in Australia, but I’m hearing from those who do that waiting times are now at unprecedented levels.
Apparently, according to an ONS bod, the Government has no accurate figures on the actual population of the UK.
Maybe it’s now more reliable to estimate population by asking all the supermarkets for their regional food sales. Seems a lot cheaper than sending out an increasingly intrusive form, followed by visits by goons if you don’t complete it by the deadline …
Then correct this for a few small factors:
1 sales from small shops, restaurants, cafes, etc
2 production of home-grown fruit and vegs., eggs from free-range chickens, etc.
Result: regional population figures to within a few million.
The most reliable method appears to be to work back from what arrives at the local sewage plant. Not everyone shops at a supermarket, but everyone…
Sorry for the duplicate – I didn’t see your post before clicking send. We’ve obviously both heard the same thing.
lol – sh1t happens… as they say! ;o)
I’ve heard that the quantity of sewage produced in a given area is also a more reliable statistic than the census. (I wish this were a joke, but it’s deadly serious.)
By design. They based immigration numbers on the International Passenger Survey, which was an absolute farce of a system that performed a tiny voluntary dip sample survey on a few incoming travellers on daytime flights at major airports.
Their answers about their intentions were taken at face value, and there was no box for “Planning to overstay my tourist or student visa and vanish into the grey economy”.
Even the ONS eventually had to admit this wasn’t fit for purpose. The obvious solution is just record passports in to passports out, but of course what they’re going with is “statistical modelling”.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationstatisticaldesignprogressreport/2021-11-26
what was point of census then – the big cumbersome form that if you didn’t complete satisfactorly you faced some kind of prosecution?
was that just a government workfare scheme to keep some people in employment??
They do if it means they can make vaccines appear more effective
Why are they leaving after two years on holiday, because they have too big a pension.
They haven’t accounted for the ‘boomer wave’ that’s about to engulf the NHS, and that’s been apparent for the last sixty years, if they cared to notice…
Can you say some more about this? Where are the bottlenecks? Few pop their clogs on ventilators. And if the median “wait” for treatment for XYZ (if a person gets any treatment at all) increases from say 3 years to 5 years, people are so passive in this country that not very many people will go out on the street and burn tyres.
“The average cost of treating patients aged around 65 in the NHS is 2.5 more than patients aged around 30; for those in the 90+ age bracket, the cost is seven times higher than the 30-year-old age bracket. The aging population is raising the cost of running the NHS, and the NHS, which is already suffering from a lack of sufficient funds and services, will no longer be able to meet public needs.”
From: Refurbishing the NHS: UK Faces Challenges of an Aging Population – thebritishtribune
Pretty much any search of the NHS and an aging population comes to the same conclusion.
The vast majority of those immigrants will be young and healthy, keen to work and therefore pay taxes which are needed to support the health of the rapidly aging population. Many of them will be working in the NHS or care. We would be in an even worse position without them.
Studies in both Norway and The Netherlands a few years ago showed that only migrants from elsewhere in NW Europe were net contributors to the public finances. That’s because the labour of others isn’t worth much, which means they pay little tax, and as soon as they have a child they become a net drain on the system.
The worst performers were Somalis and Afghans.
And however did we manage before limits on immigration were largely scrapped in 97?
I wonder if the health services in the other western European countries that significantly outperform the NHS are as dependent on imported labour?
We are talking about the UK not Norway or the Netherlands. Here different studies draw different conclusions about contributions to public finances. Migration Watch has a nice summary of different bits of research. but the overall conclusion is complicated and uncertain. Anyhow most of this just measures the strict fiscal balance – not the overall contribution to the economy.
I am not sure we did manage in the 1990s. But to the extent that we did, the population was younger then.
Doctors these days are pretty much just reps for the pharma industry. I’m sure they can prescribe medication much more quickly and efficiently via zoom.
Doctors these days are pretty much just reps for the pharma industry.
You know, I used to think GP’s were there for the benefit of the patient – I realise now I was completely wrong – in my mind they are first and foremost a business and are there to earn money for the practice and as much dough as they possibly can – nothing wrong with earning a profit, I understand that – but I actually mean pushing all kinds of uneccesary medications (including covid jabs) in an attempt to get as many people hooked on prescibed drugs for as long as possible knowing full well that most of these people don’t really need them. I know of people who have been repeat presciptions for as long 20-30 years – everything from blood pressure tablets and anti-depressants to Statins and all other kinds of of prescribed medication without once having to see their GP in that time – they just phone up the surgery, speak to the receptionist and the next day the prescription is in the phramacy waiting for them – GP surgeries must be earning an absolute fortune from these prescription junkies.
I have nothing against a medical system that operates for profit. I think free exchange for profit is overwhelmingly a force for good. But it has to be free exchange. Which means that the demand side, the patient, the customer, also needs to be free to chose.
What we seem to have now is a supply side of pharma, tech, doctors incentivised by profit and mandated patients with little or no freedom of choice. Basically, a racket in which billions of tax money is channelled every year towards a profit making medical establishment.
And to add insult to injury we are encouraged to stand on our doorsteps clapping and cheering for it all.
If patients can be seen over the phone or internet … why are we paying the huge cost of British doctors when we can get any qualified doctor from anywhere on the globe to provide the same service?
That is how you do it. A national campaign to give us the right to consult any doctor anywhere. Fear will drive them back to work.
The harsh reality is we are learning the hard way what happens when we allow everything to be paid from general taxation. Even changing to paying an explicitly marked “Medical Tax” on your salary slip focuses attention. It reminds people we pay for all this.
This is Britain. They run it like a colony. People do what they’re bl**dy well told and like it.
I think Amazon will soon be offering the same service as part of Prime membership. No joke.
At least the ‘doctor’ in the pic has bothered to put on his white coat and stethoscope, so we know standards haven’t plummeted too far.
“His”? Are you a biologist?
I’m rather surprised he’s not wearing a mask. How did they miss the opportunity to reinforce or our reprogramming? They’re getting sloppy..
Off topic but on the subject of reinforcement programming.
https://ibb.co/b1wWv6v
It’s impossible here in West Dorset to make an appointment over the phone to see your GP. The receptionist, in her inimitably haughty manner, advises to use the “e consult” online service, which is useless and (if you’re “lucky”) only results in a brief phone contact by an unknown, untrusted doctor.
My reply to the receptionist is along the lines of “what is wrong with Doctor X, is he dead – or playing golf?”. Last time I slammed the phone down, muttering “what a stitch up”.
Do you think GP’s receptionists are chosen because of their snotty attitude? Or do you think they have to go on training courses? They seem to see their entire role as protecting their GPs from the patients.
True. They somehow, with practice, manage to see themselves as well qualified and superior – apparently an attitude they osmotically absorb from the GPs.
Ha yes. Little do they know the doctors probably have even more contempt for them than they do for us!
Gatekeepers:
Surgery: “Please do not enter if you feel unwell”
Everyone I know who has come into contact with a GP’s receptionist is saying the same thing.
To answer your question: I think it comes “naturally” to them, given the British cultural environment that they’re in. In Britain, most who sit behind desks and talk to “members of the public” are conditioned to be full of contempt and hatred, even if they themselves when they’re not at work are sometimes in exactly the same position as the person as front of them.
File under “customer services”.
Crazy but true: customers are often seen as a complete pain in the neck who don’t deserve what they are paying for (or what they’ve already paid for in their taxes) and who are essentially just trying to scrounge off their heroic supplier. They’re seen as basically barbarian filth.
It’s not like that in most other countries.
You know the old joke – “this would be a great place to work if it wasn’t for the customers/patients etc etc”
In my area it isn’t a joke now – it is reality.
Okay, this is going to sound petty and small minded (but I don’t actually care, because I have become petty and small minded)… we have a couple of fire breathing dragons on the plastic and wood screen protected reception desk at our surgery. In the background you can see various members of staff meandering about. The chief receptionist is grossly fat (20 stone I would say), her second in command is just fat. Behind them nearly all the staff, including one man, are either large or very large. It’s a bit like a comedy sketch, with a selection of bad tempered Mr Blobby lookalikes stamping round crossly in their anti-covid compound. I have watched with amusement as I wait for someone (anyone) to acknowledge I am actually standing there. So many NHS employees are fat it’s just amazing. And they dole out health advice? Ha.
The receptionist is just doing their job, the doctor probably isn’t actually in the building anyway. Their attitude, in large part, is generally a result of dealing with the public every day…
how are elderly people – some of whom cannot work that technology supposed to manage to cope with that?
Absolutely. I’m in my 70s. I can work it but I find it intimidating. What’s needed is face to face contact with the GP I’ve learnt to trust.
It’s ok they’re allowed to carry a paper copy of their video consultation.
Our doctors surgery has now stopped taking orders for repeat prescriptions over the phone or in person. You know have to go on the website. This should kill off a few more old people
Mines been using online requests for years. Previously, you could also drop off a paper form in a box in the surgery, and you picked up your repeat prescription from there. It normally took 2 days. .
Not any more! Online only, please allow at least a week for it to be processed, all prescriptions are sent automatically to the pharmacy next door, where the staff are still cowering behind plastic screens – don’t dare come into the GP’s surgery in person, you disease carrying monsters!
Yes – you hit the nail on the head. “Disease carrying monsters” – filth, basically.
Same here.
Best to stock up on whatever medicines you need by buying at least a year’s supply over the internet. Yes it’s expensive, but there you go – that’s reality. Those who have house insurance policies or such cr*p can always get some funds by discontinuing them.
Goodness me, the life of the doctor (and the receptionists) would be so much more pleasant, were it not for the patients.
Still, they are all doing their best to “doctor”, without having any in person contact with the people they are being paid to help.
Plus, the customers are always ill! Ew. So depressing.
Given that more and more people are having to turn up at A&E for things that should be dealt with by GPs but aren’t, if I was the head of a local care trust, I’d be seriously considering setting up a GP-style service within the hospital ‘in competition’ with GPs and getting patients to sign up. Might as well get the ‘patient premium’ if they’re having to do the work.
If you were a pharmacist, would you be thinking of dispensing generic medicines, i.e. exactly the same as those that are “prescribed” but not of the specified brand, and much cheaper? They would drum you out of the “profession” within five minutes’ flat, and turn your name into mud. The pressure would feel as though the roof had fallen in.
GPs are all a bunch of lying crooks, and so are NHS hospital medics almost all of the time.
Nailed it OB!! Genius idea!
We must learn to live without “Doctors: and A & E. The problem is that they will be criminalising the alternatives which actually .keep you healthy.
Let’s face it – they want people to be sick – they are easier to ‘vaccinate’ and control.
Related, a pharmacist friend is now begging the GP practice across the road to stop soapy-shouldering people onto her.
She’s already working unpaid hours to fulfil the unlimited demand for “free” (Scotch) prescriptions, and can’t retain staff once they see what the job really involves: hour after hour of relentless, thankless, grinding repetitive work where one slip-up can kill, and the NHS payment is inadequate to cover paying competitive wages. One of her staff just packed it in to make more money as a veterinary receptionist, to put it in perspective.
And on top of that she’s now being sent a constant stream of desperate people who’ve been told to go to her to be diagnosed, many of whom she has to tell to go straight back again because their symptoms are way beyond her remit. It’s breaking her heart and her spirit.
What is soapy-shouldering??
Passing the buck at the same time as taking the P155?
That isn’t fair. But it follows that patients will be pushed down the food chain and people on the lower rungs will have to take up the slack.
I’ve said it before many times on this forum but I now have an intrinsic and automatic distrust of medical professionals. They showed themselves to be little more than stupid automatons following crazy diktats from above in spite of clear and obvious evidence that they were causing more harm than good. Don’t even get me started on the gene therapy injections. They have brought medicine into disrepute and unless they spoke out and took action, as very few did, they can go to hell, I will never trust them again.
My wife worked in drug addiction for many years and she has always distrusted and disliked doctors who, in the large part, could never understand addiction and wielded their power to prescribe like some kind of power trip, punishing addicts in ways that never helped improve anyone’s lives. Arrogant, ignorant and self-important.
Well said.
They actively encouraged people to take up the clot shots.
And to strong-arm doctors into damaging children with fake ‘vaccines’ the government paid doctors £10-00 to jab them in addition to the £15-00 or so they got from jabbing each adult.
£25-00 per jab for harming kids.
They are as venal as f***, and amoral with it.
They’d do anything if they were paid for it.
Quite agree that there is no way they should be let off the hook.
“I only get paid for it” is an even worse excuse than “I’m only doing what I’m told”.
They are scum.
Funnily enough, “scum” is exactly what they think those who criticise them in a fundamental way are.
Obviously GP services are struggling at the moment but I fear pressure to force GPs into making a face to face appointment when a telephone call would do (I can, for example, see some kind of measurement and cash incentive to make a good political headline). Face to face appointments typically mean travelling to the surgery and waiting in a room full of sick people – sometimes for an hour or more. Recently I have handled several problems with both myself and my mother via our respective GPs over the telephone and it has been much more convenient.
GPs don’t like ill people.
Any specialist medic will be able to confirm.
Why? Because they think they’re entitled to keep as much of the money they can claim for as possible, so any amount they “spend” on a patient is a cost – it’s as if they’re being “robbed”. Yes – they think patients are parasitic on THEM.
Scum of the earth!
Like any other profession, GPs vary. I expect there are some that try to limit their commitments to patients. However, my GP gives me outstanding support. I take a number of drugs and vaccinations that could come off either the GP practice budget or the specialist’s budget. There is never a hint of trying to move it to the specialist. My mother’s GP took the initiative to ring my sister to suggest a treatment he had thought of when he didn’t need to do anything.
If esteem for quacks has gone through the floor, that’s a positive development since the start of the fascist period in March 2020.
The same goes for bankers after 2008. It may seem normal now to say that bankers are w*nkers and “Hey, got your bonus, have you?” but before 2008 hardly anybody dared criticise the stalwarts of the High Street, thieving outfits such as Lloyds, Barclays, Santander, and HSBC. You were generally seen as a headbanging nutter if you did. “Keep away from that guy – he’s going on about bankers.”
Insurance companies are still blue-eyed boys, though. Very few people understand the basic arithmetical fact that the expected payout from any insurance policy is negative. Even Fields Medal winner (and Cummings-chum t*sser) Timothy Gowers only realised it late in life.
Next on the list? Let’s hope it’s schoolteachers and headteachers, before it’s too late.
I’m being overly optimistic, of course. It’s always f***ing too late.
It SHOULD go without saying (but doesn’t) that Google is OBVIOUSLY on the list, as are Faecebook and Sh*tter.
But criticise Google now, and most people think you are insane.
For those who want to study “GP world”, including how GPs think, the magazine Pulse, which is aimed at them, is probably an extremely useful source – not just the articles, but the comments too.
They have little shame when they feel they’re among themselves – they let their hair down.
It’s at pulsetoday.co.uk
Visited. Repulsed. Left sharply.
This was written by a GP in Essex – he put his name to it (says it all really) – I wouldn’t want him to so much as lay a finger on me let alone be my GP if this is what he thinks:
“But if the answer to a, er, health crisis is to decisively impose a system of rationing, aren’t we missing an open goal here? After all, flush-busting oestrogens aren’t the only things in short supply in the NHS, are they? GPs are at a premium, too. And if perimenopausal women can be noble enough to accept restrictions on personal supplies of HRT for the greater good of womankind, then patients should man/woman up for the benefit of the general populace. By which I mean, restrict themselves to seeing the GP only three times a year, tops. This doesn’t just mean less demand. We know that 10% of our list create 90% of our work – if we could spread those consultations around a bit to the less frequent attenders then everyone gets a go, diagnoses aren’t delayed and everyone’s happy.”
UTTERLY LOATHESOME
Yep. That’s what I’m talking about!
Medical schools clearly do such a good job don’t they?
Talk about bedside manner!
I think it’s a spiffing idea. Nobody on the public payroll should have to endure face to face meetings with any of the hideous and ungrateful plebs who pay their wages. How fortunate that lockdowns created the opportunity to have a test run with this idea and prove how wonderful and successful it was.
Next up: the police only to meet the criminal fraternity via the telephone or Zoom. I am sure they can come up with statistics and models to prove that this will reduce crime.
But did the government not put a bill in Queen’s Speech to ban working from home???
Does this not pull rug out from under GPs who won’t see patients in person?
If not, I might lobby my MP to campaign to insert a clause into the Bill which deals specifically with GP access.
9 year old in the family has a racing heart beat and chest pains. Repeatedly. Doctor wanted a monitor fitted to record events over 48hrs. This took two months, not least because the urgent request from a Consultant, was forgotten about. We await result. Meantime, he is regularly picked up from school as they do not want the responsibility when an event occurs (quite rightly).
Ambulances are now refused and he is quickly bounced out of A&E as they can’t do anything. Pretty much, ‘stop coming here’. He was diagnosed with SVT by a Consultant, though none of the ECGs to date had shown it. There was evidence of AV block. A beta blocker was prescribed, which causes chest pains if you have AV block. His chest pains are worse.
Today he had radically different BP readings in each arm. He is in A&E now. When is one of these serious and needs attention? Or do we stop ‘bothering’ the NHS? We await someone coming back to us with a review of the recent recordings and hopefully an actual diagnosis and a plan. 9 year old, with a heart issue. Not that important. (And yes, they did find him to have symptomless Covid, put him on a Covid ward and discharge as caused by Covid, at one point. So fashion has been addressed).
Sounds horrendous and very stressful, both for you and your 9 year old son. Hope you find someone who can help and soon.
The sweet irony is that by enthusiastically jumping on board the remote consultation bandwagon, doctors have hastened the demise of their own profession. They will eventually be replaced by AI consultants and through their own laziness, fear and lack of diligence, have helped the public become accustomed to impersonal screen consultations.
Demand > Supply simple as that.
Just not enough GPS for whatever reason facing an exponential demand
Not going to get better any time soon if at all
xxd09
Attended a blood test ‘review’ yesterday at my local surgery – a chat with, in the past, a doctor, which was held once a year. I wasn’t granted the tremendous privilege of a blood test/review in either 2020 or 2021, so was pleased when things seemed to have gone back to normal this year, when, a couple of weeks ago I had a call – they called me!!! – to arrange one. So they took the blood a week ago and yesterday was review day. I just assumed I’d be talking to a doctor, given that I had technical questions to ask. I was ushered into what was clearly the doctor’s examination room and I asked the nurse which doctor I was seeing. She let me down gently: “No you’re seeing me. Are you not happy with that?”
I asked her two of the questions I had, and when she couldn’t answer them I told her “No I’m not happy with that” and left in, I admit it, high dudgeon. I mean, wtF is the point?
In our practice – in Scotland – you have to phone at 8.30am to try to get an appointment. You are in competition with everyone else doing the same thing. If you’re lucky you get told you’re in the queue. If you’re unlucky you get cut off or told you’re in the queue and then get cut off. It’s a total lottery and then if you get through you get told there are no more appointments for that day and to try again the next day. It’s no surprise that A&E departments are overrun.