Grumpy Old Sod Dot Com - an internet voice for the exasperated. Sick of the nanny state? Pissed off with politicians? Annoyed by newspapers? Irate with the internet? Tell us about it!

Send us an email
Go back
11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
Captain Grumpy's bedtime reading. You can buy them too, if you think you're grumpy enough!
More Grumpy Old Sods on the net

 

 
Older stuff
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
At present this story may only be relevant to those of us who live in Suffolk, but who knows how long it will be before the same sort of thing is happening nationwide. It's quite a long report, taken from the Ipswich-based newspaper the East Anglian Daily Times - not normally known for its crusading stance. Be patient - the sting is in the tail.
 

 
There were fresh calls last night for the East of England Strategic Health Authority to be abolished after it emerged its management costs soared by £1.3million in just one year. The authority spent more than £13million on managers. That was a 10% increase on the 2007/08 figure, from £12,373m to £13,636m - and included a salary of up to £240,000 for its chief executive Neil McKay, a £20,000 pay rise from the previous year.
 
Dr Paul Cosford, director of public health, saw his salary rise by about 23% from 125-130k to 155-160k and Lee Whitehead, director of communications, received £4k benefits in kind on top of his 105-110k salary, which rose about 16%.
 
Last night, MPs and health campaigners said it was a slap in the face for the people of Suffolk who have been digging deep in their own pockets raising funds to improve services in Ipswich.
 
Richard Spring, MP for West Suffolk, renewed calls for the SHA to be abolished calling the jump in management costs “madness”. “At a time when it is very clear the NHS is suffering a shortage of doctors and nurses in some parts of the country the role of the SHA needs to be put under the spotlight,” he said. “It is simply obscene to see these salary increases paid for by taxpayers, when absolutely nobody in the private sector has enjoyed a salary increase like this. They have no relationship with reality, this idea that management costs can rise by 10% in one year is sheer madness and it certainly underlines my firm view that the sooner the SHA is abolished the better.”
 
Health campaigner Prue Rush called the salary increases a slap in the face for the people of Suffolk. She said: “They are abusing their position. They are getting higher wages as people on the front line are not getting their pay rises. The NHS is struggling to pay nurses and for care in the community yet the number of administrators keeps on rising. It is awful, it is just insulting to the people whose wages they won't increase.”
 
She said the constant increase in administrative costs reveals their inefficiencies, having to up the number of managers whilst struggling to boost front line services. “It makes me so cross to see them spending all this money on these people, proving themselves they are inefficient. The money should be spent on front line staff,” she added.
 
She also criticised managers within the health service for having little appreciation of how a hospital functions, focusing on targets rather than allowing medical staff with the necessary expertise the chance to treat patients in the best possible way. “They do not have the sufficient experience to understand when they put out these targets what it entails for front line staff trying to keep up,” she said.
 
But the authority hit back at the criticism saying national pay scales for senior NHS staff are dictated by the Department of Health. The SHA said at director level their staff only received a rise of 2.2% with the big boost in salaries coming from bonus payments not paid in 2007/08 because their performance was not good enough.
 
A spokesperson from NHS East of England said: “We have made clear progress across the region on the issues that matter to patients, including waiting times; access to health screening; and dealing with Healthcare Associated Infections. The East of England had the lowest rates of healthcare associated infection in the country in 2008/09.”
 

 
Well, isn't that all fine and dandy? The East of England has the lowest levels of "healthcare associated infection" in the country? Hospitals in East Anglia are sending patients home with infections they didn't have when they were admitted, and that's a matter for self-congratulation because it's even worse elsewhere? Is it just possible that the East of England has lower levels of healthcare associated infection because it has lower levels of healthcare?
 
But we promised you a sting in the tail, and here it is. We left it till last because we think it just beggars belief; you just couldn't make this stuff up, could you? ....

 

 
The East of England Strategic Health Authority, which spends £13million a year on "managers" and is ruled by a Chief Executive whose annual salary is £240,000, delivers no front line services at all.
 
Its function, apparently, is to provide “strategic leadership, oversight and support to all local NHS organisations”, whatever that means. Actually, what it has meant recently is that it has moved key services, including head and neck cancer services and critical heart attack care, away from Ipswich which is one of just four major urban centres in East Anglia, the others being Colchester, Cambridge and Norwich.
 

 
Imagine that. Thirteen million pounds a year, and not a single nurse, technician, doctor, surgeon or orderly. Thirteen million pounds a year, and not one patient. Thirteen million pounds a year for polishing office furniture.
 
We repeat, you couldn't make it up. But luckily you don't have to - this is the reality of the NHS under Nu Labour.

 

 
The GOS says: I'm really pleased to hear that the East of England Strategic Health Authority made clear progress in "access to health screening". How long will it be before this progress reaches me, I wonder?
 
I am 67 years old, have lived in East Anglia for the last 34 years, and I have never been offered any kind of health screening at all. Mrs.GOS gets called in regularly to have her lumps felt and her lady bits looked at, but me?
 
Not a sausage.
 
Doctors tell us that elderly men ought to be checked regularly for blood pressure, cholesterol levels, diabetes, heart problems, prostate, bowel and testicular cancer, but do they do it?
 
Do they buggery. I had to pay the local private hospital £350 for a day's testing (I think it was £300 for the tests and £50 for the prawn sandwich at lunchtime), which is a bloody expensive way to get someone to stick their finger up your bum. It was a nice sandwich, though.
 
There's quite a good article about private health screening here.
 

 
Grumpy Old Sod.com - homepage
 

 
Use this Yahoo Search box to find more grumpy places,
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Copyright © 2009 The GOS
 
Grumpy Old Sod.com - homepage

 

Captain Grumpy's
Favourites
- some older posts

 
Campaign
 
Proposal
 
Burglars
 
Defence
 
ID cards
 
Old folk
 
Hairy man
 
Democracy
 
Mud
 
The NHS
 
Violence
 
Effluent
 
Respect
 
Litter
 
Weapons
 
The church
 
Blame
 
Parenting
 
Paedophiles
 
The Pope
 
Punishing
 
Racism
 
Scientists
 
Smoking
 
Stupidity
 
Swimming
 
Envirocrap
 
Spying