A letter from 900 NHS doctors to the Prime Minister today makes the case for ending the ‘free at the point of delivery’ mantra that has been with the Health Service since its inception.
“Rationing of services and bigger financial deficits were the inevitable result of preserving the status quo, they said.” (The Guardian)
What we see here is the continual failure to understand ‘rationing’. There is always rationing of services, in any system, and always will be. Unless, of course, we discover Socialist Utopia World* (TM) with unlimited resources, then clearly there will always be rationing!
In the NHS, services are not rationed by price but by time (‘waiting lists’) and a limit to how far the service will go (i.e. the NHS will prioritise younger patients with a greater chance of survival, and pay for the drugs with the highest success rate.) In other systems, price simply becomes another form of rationing – along with more bureaucracy, more waste and greater inequality.
To increase your ‘rations’, you have to increase supply. Hence more money going into the NHS, reform of its structure to make it more effective, etc etc. (Argue about how well this has been done till dawn if you want to.) Of course demand is also rising – an ageing population, greater demand for ever more expensive health services and so on. I think the obvious conclusion is that the NHS will always have a limit to what it provides – but just like any other system on the planet.
The public agree. “Two-thirds said the NHS in its present form was unlikely ever to meet public demands, however much was spent on it.” But there is no magic replacement system, and the NHS is the fairest and most equitable way of delivering healthcare – free at the point of delivery, regardless of the ability to pay. So perhaps those 900 NHS doctors should get back to work, on their increased pay packets.
Oh and there is one piece of good news – “Three-quarters of the sample said politicians should be removed from day-to-day management of the health service.”
*(Socialist Utopia World does sounds like a great name for a theme park. In the leaflet: How do I get to Socialist Utopia World? Keep turning left.)
Welcome to Quote of the Day, your daily morsel of the world.
Each morning at 9am I’ll post whatever line catches my eye, and you can subscribe via RSS as well as checking out the new placement on the home page. 
Some of the inspiration, by the way, comes from Queen Park’s ridiculously silly ‘Thought of the Week’ pieces at the bottom of each week’s newsletter. You know the ones, deliberately constructed to state the bloody obvious and trying to sound clever while doing it. Quote for the Day, on the other hand, will be different.
We’ll see how it goes… but enjoy the ride!
Well Easter holidays start today, April 1st, for me at least. (And no – nothing I type is an April Fools, it’s after 12!) That means I finally have some chance to relax and plan a bit instead of hurtling along the term as usual. Lots of homework, coursework and general revision to do, naturally, and I’ll also be launching a new feature on this site (soonish) which will finally make some more use of the home page. Yay!
And, of course, Doctor Who returns April 15th at 7pm, BBC ONE. It’s going to be awesome, so make sure you watch 
Today (well, yesterday) was our wonderful Physics lectures trip to prepare for upcoming exams. An examiner was going through power in electric circuits when we notice a guy standing in one of the rows behind where we were sitting, praying. Praying loudly and annoyingly and distractingly with lots of humming. Well, it was a church after all, when it’s not being rented out for conferences. Attempting to first ignore him, then asking him to leave (prayer rooms were available elsewhere after all 
) the police were eventually called and he was led out in handcuffs.
Forget about the individual case, I just love the symbolism. Physics over prayer 
And prayer certainly won’t help with what I have just realised… it’s almost April, and April is my last full month before exams start again. Eek! And my first exam will be a Physics practical, officially the most stressful exam in the world, ever, bar none. Making language orals look like a walk in the park. I’d fail it but I really don’t want to, so I won’t. 
Update: How did I forget to mention that Costa Coffee gave us all free coffee as we came home yesterday? I’m not really a coffee person – go hot chocolate! – but I like the price of free. So here you go Costa, have some free blog publicity in return
Yesterday (back when we were sensibly using GMT instead of this BST nonsense – have to change blog settings again) I went on a little recce to Oxford partly to see what it was like, and also to meet up with Josie and Lucy (who was Alton Towersing (see comments) last Saturday). The funny thing was that I found it a bit small and towny – even more so than Cambridge – while they found it large and peopley 
Oh, and I broke McDonald’s.
Incidentally, someone in the train station said ‘boofet’ over the PA system. And when Birmingham and London people both agree it’s ‘buffet’ with a silent t you know there’s been a linguistic error. Which was confirmed by linguistic parents today. Hurrah.
I think Cambridge wins out over Oxford for me, so far. But that assumes I can get in. Hence the slightly reduced blog posts recently as I rush around doing homework and coursework and work of any nature whatsoever
It’s only one week till the Easter holidays though! And hopefully, as well as getting Maths and ICT coursework done, and as well as revising hard for, ur, everything else, I will have the time to implement some planned tweaks to this site. Stay tuned!
Oh and I need to make a ‘browser compatibility statement’ so here goes: I only plan to design for the very latest non-beta versions of Firefox and Opera. Of course with Internet Explorer it’s slightly harder. At the moment I will try to ensure that everything works in IE6 (I don’t go lower than IE6, sorry!) and IE7 even when IE7 goes final – but IE7 has so many rendering improvements that I do strongly encourage all readers to upgrade when it goes final sometime this year. In the meantime I have a bit of a problem as I can’t check the site in IE6 so easily, so if you spot any glaring errors, lemme know!
And finally – Happy Mother’s Day! In Oxford we saw rather too many cards saying ‘For my wife on Mother’s Day’ which I thought was soliciting the crime of incest and therefore rather dodgy. No one outside of the Self clan will get this (inside joke!), but I might as well link to what passes for a card from me 
Tis the thought! (Which reminds me, am I the only one counts my mother as a – sadly non-RSS – blog reader?)
Rob Bell on Baby’s first blog: “Congratulations! Sounds like you are really enjoying the first few weeks which is great. Time flies!” Oct 13, 12:59
