caramac

19 minutes ago, Slean Wolfhead said:

My parents met an Aussie couple on holiday in the Cotswolds...they said they came to the UK every summer to spend money and stay for a good few months in a caravan, so pretty wealthy.  The old Aussie guy had broken his leg some months before. 

He said he'd been taken to hospital and was treated extremely well, plastered up, then was under Outpatient care until they could fly home.  He told my dad they'd only asked his name and address...so he'd done that and given the address of the caravan park.  They wouldn't take his insurance even though he had it available.

When we went into Medicare this time, my daughter told them that she is just here temporarily (she is Australian) and was told that although she can’t have a Medicare card (we’d assumed she wouldn’t anyway) she would be seen by a gp or hospital under the reciprocal arrangement, even for non urgent things, so maybe it works like that both ways. I always assumed she’d have to use travel insurance if not resident except for emergencies. 

1 hour ago, ramot said:

The supermarkets with chilled counters full of ready made meals horrified me when I was in UK last year. Yes I admit to buying from M&S while I was there, but was on holiday with limited cooking facilities. but to see so many couples often with a toddler in the trolley, in the late afternoon.  buying ready made meals for the family to eat you can only assume for their evening meal. 

This was in Bristol.

I don't live near a busy city here, so don't know if it's the same, but certainly don't see that happening in my local  Woolworths.

I have nearly always bulk cooked  and frozen, it just makes sense to me.

It’s definitely happening here in Australia too now. I’ve been a bit saddened by how much convenience food and ready meals are available in the supermarkets here now.

Given that Coles and Woolworths are run by ex uk managers it’s hardly surprising. The shops themselves are so much better than they were 20 years ago, but the availability of c*** is a bit sad. 

There are far more full time two parent working families now than ever before, so I can see the appeal of a ‘quick fix’ dinner, it’s just a shame they’re made of rubbish.

Theres also the issue (certainly in the uk) of cookery being taken off the curriculum - today’s parents never really learned to cook, so can’t pass skills on to their children. It’s a huge time bomb really, just as smoking was in the past.

One thing I have noticed as a positive is that this generation of young people seem much less interested in alcohol than mine was/is, so perhaps it’s not all bad news..

3 hours ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

The problems are well known but the govt will not have the hard conversations with the public about limitations on provision nor will they mount a proper public health campaign about self treatment and diagnosis,  

They would much rather fragment the service,  starve it of funds, not take any responsibility for public health, maintain the illusion that you can have a first class medical service on 3rd world ratios and then palm the whole thing off to the private sector and let them do the dirty work of imposing budget lead rationing and prioitising, nothing to do with us gov', if your insurance doesn't cover it you can't have it, so bugger off.

And you only have to look at who will benefit from it being put into private hands to know why they’re doing it. 

It utterly sickens me. We have one of the most cost effective health systems in the world and it is affordable in one of the richest countries in the world, but the will isn’t there because those in power aren’t trousering any profit. We’ve seen it in social care, education and housing (more expensive and less quality, accountability and service) and it’s only the pubic’s love of the nhs which means the govt are being careful (sneaky) about how they’re privatising it. 

I think many people are waking up to what’s going, which does give me some hope....

38 minutes ago, calNgary said:

In that article it says 

'' He said hospitals were short of 10,000 to 15,000 beds and it was time for the government to decide how to fund the NHS in the long term.''

But what do they really expect when they keep closing hospitals and units down ? I really feel for the Dr's and nurses who are on the front line doing their best and yet taking all the crap from those who are kept waiting. I see no other option than to start charging for misuse of service to those who do missuse it and to clamp down on those who just go to the UK for NHS treatment. 

Cal x

I completely agree re closing beds etc. Walk in centres have been closed, the 111service isn’t fit for purpose (too many unnecessary ambulance calls which diverts crews from more urgent cases), social care cuts which means moving vulnerable people out of acute care into social care is much more difficult, etc etc etc...

I can see the point of charging people who misuse services, but there’s a problem with where the cut off point would be. Do you charge the drunks, the drug takers, the ‘attention seeking ‘suicidal’’, the constant ‘worries well’ who take up an inordinate amount of a gps time. Or do you take it as far as the obese who get type 2 diabetes and the smokers who get copd or lung cancer?

Health tourism is an issue, but it’s difficult to quantify and the admin costs of possibly recouping the 0.3% of the budget it costs is more than it’s thought the overall cost to the health service.

i think this explains the problem quite well - it’s not easy.

https://fullfact.org/health/health-tourists-how-much-do-they-cost-and-who-pays/

2 minutes ago, newjez said:

Or more likely it is this they are prescribing

http://www.colgateprofessional.co.uk/products/colgate-duraphat-5000ppm-fluoride-toothpaste/overview

And the daily mail just stuck in any old picture of Colgate toothpaste.

 

I did think it could be - my husband is prescribed that, but it did state Colgate total in the article. It’s not the cheap stuff, but one that contains triclosan which apparently helps combat gum disease.

It’s an old story though. Looking back it’s regurgitated from 2015. Still, it diverts attention from the real causes of a shortfall in funding...

2 minutes ago, newjez said:

Could the toothpaste may also be prescribed to patients in hospital who forget it?

Possibly. It’s a long time since I worked on the wards, but when I did we had a supply of basics like toothpaste, soap, shampoo etc, which came out of the ward budget, rather than being prescribed. It’s probably changed now, but it wouldn’t be gps prescribing for hospital patients though.

1 hour ago, starlight7 said:

All this is interesting as I have a family member who has just retired quite early from being a successful and well liked GP in Britain.Considering all the many years of training, leaving in your late 50s seems rather premature.  Here they don't seem to retire early at all, just cut their days down and work part time - I would have assumed it was the same over there but it seems not. Why is that?

My husband retired from his consultant post at 55. He had what was called mental health officer status which meant he could leave then.  He would have gone on longer, but the cuts meant he was no longer able to provide the service he set up. The government also started talking about changing the way pensions are paid, so he decided to bank his before anything else changed. He then went back part time, but there are limits on how much work you can do there before they start cutting your pension (you can earn, between your pension and income, up to what you were earning before retirement). He wasn’t ready to retire really, as you say, it’s very young, so we decided to come back to Australia for a few years, at least. He’s setting up a new youth mental health service here.

We have friends who are gps and they’ve all had enough. Those who can go, are going. Those who can’t are going part time. Other, younger drs are choosing different career paths. What is your relative’s reason for leaving?

If it’s the case that gps are prescribing these things for anyone, then I’d agree, but I’d be extremely surprised if that’s the case. Having worked in gp surgeries, I know what lengths they go to to reduce their prescription costs, so I would presume there will be good reasons for prescribing these things. The Colgate toothpaste pictured looks like it’s been provento reduce gingivitis, but it’s expensive. Without doing any research, I’d guess that it’s prescribed to those on low incomes in an attempt to reduce the cost to the nhs of treating gum disease and the other complications which arise from that. There’s an increased risk of heart disease from having gum disease, for example.

All people with coeliac disease are entitled to prescriptions for gluten free products, but the ones available on prescription are pretty unpalatable apparently, so those who can afford better quality products buy their own. It’s the poorer people who have to use the prescription products and they probably couldn’t afford to buy them themselves as they’re so much more expensive than gluten containing products. 

Given that there’s going to be a trial on giving prescriptions for ‘normal’ food in London soon, it’s not going to get better, sadly.

12 hours ago, newjez said:

This probably raises other questions about whether people should receive specific food stamps or a food package as part of their benefits, especially if they have children.

Sunscreen is an important part of many chemotherapy regimes. It is often a specific and very expensive sunscreen. We're not talking holidays. Equally, there is an extremely expensive mouth wash that is used in many chemotherapy regimes to prevent mouth ulcers. The nature of the treatment dictates this.

Likewise, there are extreme dandruff conditions which requires special treatment.

There is a grain of truth in the article. The NHS used to prescribe gym memberships. I would question that, as there is plenty of free exercise available. But unfortunately the article takes things out of context and doesn't present a balanced view.

I was going to post something similar. There are dandruff treatments, toothpastes etc which are only available on prescription for good reasons, such as possible drug interactions, comorbidities, high dosage of  ‘drug’ such as ketoconazole or fluoride, but that’s not Daily Fail ‘newsworthy’, so they take a grain of truth and mangle it to fit their own agenda.

There are plenty of drugs now available ‘over the counter’ which used to be prescription only (ranitidine, omeprazole, mebeverine, morning after pill as four off the top of my head, as well as ones newjez has pointed out, and viagra will be available from early 2018 in the UK). It’s constantly changing as research and knowledge of drugs develops. For this reason codeine containing drugs are becoming prescription only in Australia next year because it’s been found to be potentially addictive even in small doses.

There’s also the issue of only being able to buy small quantities of a drug over counter, so people who require high doses, or large quantities of painkillers etc need to have a prescription to allow them to have the amount they need. 

8 hours ago, Sandgroper said:

My Doctor here is from England, of Indian descent but born and raised In England. He loves GP work but said what was expected of him in the UK was ridiculous 60-70 hr weeks with the prospect of every other weekend as the practice he worked at was being forced to open at weekends. 

He's loving it in Australia he can work set hours at a busy practice which he enjoys and acknowledges the better lifestyle available is beneficial for him and his young family.

It's sad that professionals that are passionate about there work are having that passion stifled by ridiculous working conditions and cuts to budgets, the NHS will end up staffed by migrants (not knocking them) and all privatization will achieve is a lowering of standards. We have two family members who work in aged care (NHS) one has over 30 years service, in the last couple of years all the NHS aged care homes in our area have been privatized and staff forced to TUPE over to a company called Care UK the way they have been treated is shocking they have been forced to take up new T&C's, lost current pensions, had pay cut considerably it really is sad to hear them talk about it.

It’s the same story you hear again and again re care workers. It’s shocking (or it should be, but everyone seems so resigned to poor working conditions now it’s accepted and everyone else is busy telling the carers they should be grateful to have a job at all, so stop whinging). There are some good companies to work for (my parent’s neighbours had a fabulous company, but that was completely funded by the client), but most abuse their workforce knowing that many people have no choice but to put up with it. Not being paid for overtime, penalised for taking too long with a client, not paid for travel time etc.. The bottom line is about profit and if the clients are funded by the council/government via the company then the funding has been cut, therefore so has the profit, so the workers work longer for less.

The trust my husband worked for went over to India to recruit drs from there, which is fine, except that those drs aren’t used to the way the nhs works, so can end up costing a lot more in terms of admissions etc. They were off again to somewhere else to try to recruit just after my husband left, all at the expense of the nhs.

Another trust he worked for a few years ago has gone into ‘special measures’. Lack of staff and funding are the main reasons. When my husband was there, he and colleague set up a new service which was so successful in keeping people well, in school or work and out of hospital. Those who were admitted had shorter stays and were supported well at home once they were discharged. It was so successful they were awarded more money to roll the service out further. That was until we got the coalition government and since then the service (and my husband and colleague) has disappeared, to the detriment of the people who benefitted from it. It’s so shortsighted - keeping people well and functioning, productive members of society is economically beneficial, even if you aren’t interested in the personal benefits to the individual.

Last week there were apparently no mental health care beds anywhere in England. Not one. When there are some available, patients often have to travel miles away from their families and support networks for treatment. That situation does nothing to aid recovery, nor does it help the families who then have to take time off work to visit their relatives (again an economic drain), who are often young and vulnerable. It’s disgraceful.

The public (some of them anyway) is duped into believing it’s all the fault of immigrants, health tourists, the patients and the nhs themselves, not the ‘austerity’ being forced upon the service. The nhs is affordable - we spend less in gdp terms than most other countries and it’s generally a very efficient service despite the constant and very expensive reforms imposed on it, but it’s being driven down ready for cheap privatisation. Almost every person who works within the service knows this is the case.

It was apparently 32 in Hobart today, but 24 an hour and a half away in Premaydena. Very lovely

9 hours ago, Sandgroper said:

The NHS can't stop making the papers http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-jobs-posts-labour-warning-empty-winter-jonathan-ash-worth-a8116771.html

You can understand why nurses move half way around the world to work in better conditions.

And doctors, social workers, psychologists, pharmacists and other ancillary staff.... 

We’ve just returned to Australia for my husband to start two new jobs in Victoria. He’s currently covering as a locum in Tasmania where he’s met up with two old colleagues from the UK (both drs too). He has several members from his team in the UK waiting for their paperwork to be completed before they come over too. There were seven consultant vacancies (and numerous nursing ones) in the region before he left and no one wants to fill them. People are leaving to work in shops, emigrate, or taking early retirement. As of today, for the first time there are 100,000 vacancies in the NHS, including 10,000 drs and 40,000 nurses.

The pay and conditions here are way better than they are currently in the UK - my husband has an office and everything! (In the UK, for the past six years, as head of service, his office was his car and his admin support was his BlackBerry. It was utterly ridiculous.

Of course there are issues here too, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise, but very sadly, the NHS is not a good place to work at the moment, and it’s a very deliberate ploy by Hunt to drive it into the ground - he’s doing his master’s bidding very effectively.

Anyone who thinks the NHS isn’t being set up for privatisation needs to give their head a wobble. It’s already happening - http://www.patients4nhs.org.uk/private-companies-involvement-in-the-nhs/.  Richard Branson just sued the NHS for £2m because Virgin lost a contract, but they’ve been awarded a £104m contract to run children’s services in Lancashire. Given how well ( ) privatisation of social care, housing, schools (academies) is working, it’s sure to be rip roaring success and save the taxpayer millions..... or not.....

22 hours ago, Quoll said:

Yup, still here! Mum died in January and dad is fighting on at 93. I'm good for coffee some time! 

I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm definitely up for a coffee/lunch soon. Should be in Norfolk sometime in Sept/Oct, depending on how well house hunting goes this week

11 hours ago, Quoll said:

So you're heading back again?! Is everyone going?

Too good an offer to refuse, and I is constrained by pension rules in the UK,  so it seems like a good idea for a few years. 

It's complicated - two are going back soon, eldest finishes uni next year, then is off to live in either Russia or Japan, middle and I are spending a year back near you (are you still here), while she applies for grad posts and we'll travel back and forth in the holidays. 

House hunting in both places begins in earnest next week - a foot in both camps!

We're sitting at Melbourne airport waiting for our flight home after three weeks of suburb hunting. We all loved Mt Eliza, so it's probably where we'll end up buying in the end. It has a lovely relaxed feel to it and is close enough to Dandenong (where my husband will be working) to commute.

None of us want to leave!

St Kilda. 31/7. A bit chilly, but beautiful!

Your son will probably have to be assessed before any (if any) benefits are paid. As others have said, this government is making life difficult for some of our most vulnerable citizens, so you may (depending on your son's disability and your circumstances) need to be prepared for a battle.

Me too, with you, but I'm on my phone (battery gone on iPad) and my ageing eyesight is so bad I can only see a couple of words at a time and can't keep up with what I'm typing! I don't like this getting old business.. Sorry if it came across badly.

My eldest already has a GCSE in science after completing year 10.

 

My middle child will get one in science and English when he finishes year 10 this year.

That's why I said 'almost all' in brackets. I know there are some which haven't yet changed, but wasn't sure exactly which ones. It was different every time for all our kids and that was before Gove's changes.

It would be best for the op to contact the colleges and schools she's considering to find out what they would advise. We moved back from Australia when our eldest had missed the first term of year 10, and moved again (within the UK) when our middle one had just finished year 10, so I know it can be done, but it's not easy and you need a supportive environment for it to work, especially when the curriculum and syllabus is different.

It worked for our girls, but they did have to be very self motivated to adapt and study independently to cover the differences in courses. There were subjects the middle one couldn't take at her new school because the differences were too great to catch up with, despite her being very conscientious and hard working.

A lot will depend on your date of birth, but I'm not sure that coming back to repeat year 11 is a good idea, except for the domestic fees at uni point. All (or almost all) GCSEs are linear courses now, which means they're all full two year courses with all exams taken st the end of those two years.

However, depending on your age, date of birth and educational level, you could go straight to a college and take the full two year courses for GCSE or A levels. If the latter, you could then take a gap year before starting uni which would qualify you for the three years residency requirements for domestic fees and conditions.

Both lovely places. I've lived in Norfolk on and off for the past 30 years (how the hell did those years go by so quick!) and my heart most definitely belongs there now, but I wouldn't live in Thetford. There are lots of lovely towns and villages surrounding it though (Watton is pretty and 25 mins drive away, as is Bury St Edmunds) and, as others have said, Thetford Forest is a giant playground.

That said, getting in and out of Norfolk is a bit of nightmare - there are no motorways, although the A11 is a dual carriageway all the way now, the trains are slow and it takes almost as long to get from Norwich to Liverpool St as it takes for us to get to Kings X from Newcastle, and at weekends for the past I don't know how many years, the weekend trains have had a replacement bus service somewhere on the journey! Of course, it's location has it's plus points. Traffic isn't horrendous because Norfolk is somewhere you don't pass through to get somewhere else, so it's the destination rather than a carrier of 'through traffic'.

The landscape is quite flat (although not as flat as The Fens), but the coastline is stunning and Norwich is a pretty, accessible and easy city.

I guess it comes down to what you prefer and where you might feel most at home. I know I'll miss the scenery and hills of where we live now when we move next year, but my home is Norfolk, despite not having been born there. Can you visit before you have to make up your mind?

Less colds and no hayfever. I lived on the edge of the Fens where the rape used to drive my nostrils mad!! I obviously don't react to anything here. Weight gain due to drinking and socialising more.

I and our girls react to the rape too. And it's always bloody exam season when it's at its height! Hate the stuff.

My husband is sensitive to some of the tree pollens in Australia, but he's the only one.

None of our parents had it though did they ?

It was never even thought of until the 80s.

They did, but it wasn't recognised. People would take to their beds, or sit indoors, unable to do much from Oct/Nov until the longer days arrived again when energy levels returned.

It doesn't always manifest itself as depression. I don't get depressed or low mood, but I do feel more tired and my limbs feel like lead. I find it harder to wake up and get motivated to do anything. I find taking vitamin D helps a bit and my lightbox works too. Having a dog has helped too because he has to go for a walk every day and even the low level of light outside at this time of year is better than being inside, but sometimes it's a real effort to make myself go!

It's thought to be at least partly caused by decreased levels of serotonin and/or melatonin in some people's brains, but there is still work being done into understanding it. It's rare to find people suffering with it within 30 degrees of the equator where the daylight is more constant and brighter. I was never affected by it living in Perth even though that's outside the 30 degs, mainly, I suppose, because the winter sun is pretty bright there too.

Some people are adversely affected by summer weather too and suffer similar symptoms.

The human brain is an amazing organ and we're only just scratching the surface of understanding it.

Is that SAD really a real thing ?

 

It sounds like a new invention to me. I'd never heard of it before a few years ago and now every man and his dog claims to have it.

Yes it is and can be really debilitating for some.

I suggest Hornsby Girls High School instead : http://www.hornsbygir-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/home

 

It has a very good reputation.

 

And as says Wikipedia "Academically, Hornsby Girls' is regularly ranked first in the Hornsby region in terms of Higher School Certificate (HSC) results and is repeatedly ranked as one of the top five performing schools in the state".

It's academically selective, so it should rank well.

It's also quite difficult to get a place if you're coming in in a non entry year. Our older two were assessed as being able enough to secure places (at Sydney Girls' and N Sydney), but there weren't any for them, so we were advised to try again for year 11.

They all have a high proportion of Asian students which isn't a problem in itself, but the girls did seem to spend a lot of time going from school to music lessons, to tutors etc and that wasn't something we wanted.

Mind you, what we got wasn't something we wanted either so it's definitely worth looking at!