Indeed it is Badger, indeed it is!

Nothing wrong with Addo cryst, good palace area,but im more central, and is letting the Italian flights in unchecked until two weeks ago brilliant? I think we have a different understanding of the word in that case, but alas i"m not criticising everything the CONS have done, but the flight fiasco was an obvious mistake, as is not testing nhs workers and not having proper kit for them, so brilliant it is not!

If we get a world recession and taxes go up.....something tells me the tune will start altering.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Well, no.

ICU beds in the UK are well below those of our comparator countries and were running at over 90% occupancy well before this crisis - something considered troubling by The Kings Fund. The bed numbers have been going down for many years - basically during Conservative rule. Plus this particular issue has been predicted for 20 years. We should have had proper contingency plans and rapid ramp up capabilities.

Further, our staffing numbers are in trouble. We can't get nurses due to the reduction in education support and the challenges put in place by immigration policies. I tried hard and had some success to bring nurses in from overseas but man it was made so hard.

So you have a crippled system already, now asked to step up to a massive but predictable crisis. Simple answers - don't cripple the system in the first place, leave sensible slack for some kind of emergency and have plans for a massive emergency.

Oh, and stop bed blocking by having broader social supports to allow patients to return to the community instead of emasculating them as well.

Edited by Mapletree (28 Mar 2020 5.30pm)

"A predictable crisis" you maple are up there with the sickest post ever with that line.
260 dead today alone in the uk and over 20k in europe alone. A 100 year pandemic, italy,spain,France,usa etc all struggling to cope and you politicise it. I hope no one close to you needs a hospital bed but if they do I'm sure the best will be done for them.
SHAME ON YOU.

What are you talking about. This was always coming. Which is why I had a plan prepared for my business. If the NHS had one it wasn’t very good. Far too few ventilators and trained staff. How can you not see the NHS has been put in a horribly weakened position by multiple poor choices leading up to this? Now we need to buy time and do what we are good at, find a way. But don’t pretend we were anywhere near where we should have been when this kicked off.