Off topic's off topic thread

[Harrison]

That is true. My theory is that all these superbugs have been brought into the hospitals from the 90+ percent of foreign nurses we now seem to have working in them!

[Buleste]

I have to say i don't like that last post. The reason there are superbugs is due to outsourcing of cleaning within hospitals and also the drug companies not improving anti-biotics. Superbugs are a prime example of evolution. The only way for bugs to survive an attack by penicillin etc was to become resistant to them and as the life cycle of germs is so short they evolved faster than anyone thought plus the use of anti biotics has meant that our own immune system has not evolved to combat the bugs in the first place so we are more suseptable to them.
The foreign nurses are doing a superb job that very few people in Britain are willing to do. Superbugs were imbedded within our hospitals long before the latest influx of immigrants to the NHS.

[Harrison]

Was a joke mate. Sorry you took it the wrong way. Although seriously, the reason we have so many foreign nurses in the UK is not because British people are unwilling to do the jobs. It is because the jobs don't pay enough and the hours are too long so they are all finding better paid jobs with shorter working hours and better working conditions abroad. And equally newly qualified nurses in the UK are now finding it hard to get their fist placement due to foreign nurses taking up all of the jobs and at lower wages.

Also I had to disagree with them doing a good job from my experience of hospitals in Southampton over the past 8 years. My mum has had to go into hospital a lot since an accident she had in 2000. All but one time the wards were filthy, and the equipment and beds/bedding was dirty and covered in dried urine and blood! And what were all the nursing staff doing? They were sitting on their bums at the nurses station drinking coffee, reading papers and talking away in some Indian dialect. This hasn't impressed me at all and the condition of the wards that I've witnessed have to be a huge contributing factor in the increase of infection in hospitals.

You could argue that this is due to the outsourcing of cleaning, but it isn't. A nurses duty should be to the patient. To provide them with clean beds and bedding and a sterile environment. On more than one occasion that tried to put my mum in a bed that was clearly very dirty and we had to tell them it was too dirty and make them either clean it first (one time they had to scrub the mattress to remove the dried blood, urine etc while we waited, and they had been fully prepared to use it as it had been until we complained).

[Buleste]

The nurses are not allowed to clean anymore thats why they don't do it. But as more and more nurses are doing the jobs of junior doctors and junior doctors are doing the work of fully qualified doctors they no longer have time.
My mother is a nurse and because the nurses are not allowed to work she took a second job as a cleaner to ensure that where she works is clean.
The outsourcing of cleaning means that each hospital has no control of how the cleaning is done as all they can do is threaten the company that provides the service that they will not renew the contract but that doesn't work because the hospitals generally cannot afford to hire anyone else. The contracts then employ cheap foreign labour and do not tell them what to do, all the time making huge profits. The same goes with the outsourcing of hospital food. When it was in house the hospital could ensure taht it was healthy and nutritional. Now they're all outsourced they have the health and nutritional benefits of cardboard. The NHS used to be the best in the world but has been destroyed by cost cutting exercises brought in by Margret Thatcher and John Major and continued by the current government that were brought in without thinking about the impact on services.

[Harrison]

Very true. Out sourcing is the biggest cause of most work related problems in the UK. The second is the unions who force rules such as nurses not being allowed to clean.

[Buleste]

For once I don't think it was the unions that stopped nurses cleaning but management and the contractors. The contractors usually stick an exclusivity cause so that only their staff are allowed to clean and the managers basically say "If we're spending all this money on cleaners lets make sure that only they clean". If anything the RCN one of the biggest nursing unions actually wants cleaning in house even though it would mean more work for their members.

[Harrison]

Normally the unions act in the other direction. In Royal Mail the managers union were forced to agree that Line Managers were not allowed to do post office work and had to stand by and watch. This was because the line managers used to hands on and the workers union complained that they were doing the work of a postman and taking away their overtime. Mad!

[Buleste]

I agree most the time unions get so involved in their own self importance that they forget they are destroying their members employers businesses and so costing their members jobs. When will both employers and unions realise that there is a middle ground where workers rights can be upheld without destroying businesses. Too many people with their own self interests in this world IMO.

Why are some of the ex Eastern block countries using 8-bit numbers on the back of their shirts in Euro2008?

[v85rawdeal]

Look. I-- I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Harrison.'

[Buleste]

Blasphemy!!! Stone Him!!!!