Greedy bastards.

The Party is as ever all wise and believes in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work in all commercial organizations like the Houses' of Parliament, banks, stock brokers and the like and applies its free market principle to all and sundry with one notable exception which is the NHS.

A small piece of non news caught our eyes as it shows once again how greedy bastards are getting paid extra to do extra work something that would not happen in any other industry. Can you imagine asking a builder to work on a Saturday or a Sunday to finish a job on time because they were behind schedule? We are sure the conversation would go something like this:

“Comrade customer I am so very and truly sorry that we have not been able to finish the job on time but I will forego taking my children to the seaside this weekend and my summer holiday and I will work 168 hours a week to finish the job as agreed on time. It is a privilege and honour to work for you comrade customer and I shall not ask for any tea and biscuits or even money in case the need for food and drink and the toilet interferes with me working non stop”.

Now imagine a hard pressed comrade hospital commissar manager asking an idle hospital consultant who never works weekends if you believe a certain Jeremy Hunt to do the same.

The hard pressed consultant brushes their hair back and pulls a half smoked cigarette from behind an ear before taking a few stressed puffs from it after lighting up while looking worried and concerned at the comrade commissar’s request and shaking their head from side to side, tutting and tapping the ash from their cigarette before saying:

“That’s not gonna be cheap mate. It’s gonna cost you time and some mate. I can just about squeeze you in which ain’t gonna be easy because I’ve got more jobs on at the moment than I have comrades to work them and we are in a recession you know . . .”

So once again the press point out that market forces using the supply and demand curve mean that if there is a shortage of supply but increased demand then costs usually rise but this is verboten in the NHS “free” meerkat. Costs comrades should be zero regardless of demand for all who work in the NHS.

If you put the £ 350 million overtime into context with the overall spend and these are approximate figures from various sources then this represents about 16% of total consultant pay but remember comrades compare that with estimates of the total cost paid to all locum staff say £ 3.3 billion and for those on medical top dollar salaries £ 350 million is a small percentage of total agency spend (10.6%). And curiously the same cost of the alleged weekly benefit to the NHS from brexit so why is the BBC unhappy?

It means that full trained staff can be used to plug the gaps today rather than waiting for the Party to increase supply which will take at least 15 years if they recruited extra medical students today as demand on the NHS increases unabated. Or take the chance of possibly dodgy locum cover? (Before you start we are aware that locum staff have the same good, the bad and the ugly just as regular staff do). 

And did we also say that it costs 25 times more to fill locum posts than it does to have full time posts? Clearly the meerkat is working for the meerkat not the comrade patient.

And remember some highly trained professionals choose to work as locums for the following reasons:

1) better pay

2) choice of hours to suit family commitments

3) post retirement to top up pensions and do a job of pure clinical medicine they enjoyed without the Party add on of retardocracy that they hated and resented that went with the day job.

Still there is a solution and Jeremy knows how to do this. He will just change the contract. Perhaps the consultants will agree to the same contract as the BMA got for GPs in 2004 whereby the Party only has to “consult” about changing the “contract” each year and does not even to bother doing this now knowing that they can in true Soviet style enforce it. Maybe a consultant QOF too to make bugger all difference to patients’ healthcare other than “inviting” them back to consults for nothing more than to tick a retadocrat’s QOF box.?

We are sure the Party will want any extra consultant hours to be done for a no extra pay for extra hours clause in any new contract just like they did with GPs, junior doctors, lawyers, bankers, plumbers, builders and so on for comrades when it comes to exploitation of the NHS workforce in the NHS “meerkat” we are all in it together.

And Jeremy understands a contract as a voluntary agreement between two parties enforceable by law as a contract by Jeremy and for Jeremy take it or leave it using the concept of Party NHS “Choice”.

And interestingly the same news organization has no qualms about highly skilled operatives in a different profession that people pay for when they use it being paid a mere £ 220,000 a week after tax in contrast to the salaries commanded by consultants and GPs in healthcare.

That is the equivalent per week of the total annual earnings of 2 above average paid GPs per year total income BEFORE they have to paid their tax and after they have paid their staff and expenses.

Praise be to the Party for again once explaining to those in the NHS that extra work is to be done for no extra pay for they understand this for builders, footballers et al they pay for but the NHS is completely free at the point of abuse and should cost nothing extra for politicians to misuse it even more. Seven day working anyone?

You know it makes financial sense, simples?