Six out of ten full-time Essex ambulance crews cut (From Clacton and Frinton Gazette)

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  romantic wrote:
  

  jut1972 wrote:
  The last two paragraphs are telling. The removal of blanket coverage. In an ideal world this is what we would all want but this isnt an ideal world. The NHS has limited resources and has to prioritise those resources more effectively.
  
  Of course with any prioritisation you run the risk of getting it wrong. That risk then equates to delays and potentially death. You cant avoid that but neither can you contine to provide an "ideal world" service.
  
  It's the same argument the fire fighters have used in their dispute, lives are put at risk by cutting front line services. Of course they are. But at 4am on a Sunday in Frinton is it necessary to have a crew on hot standby for example? No, of course not.
  
  If the public sector staff gave up their inflationary pay rises for example which are not based on performance or merit but automatically given, that would save 1.9% (based on CPI). Think what 1.9% of the public sector wage budget would buy. A lot of people would still be in jobs and services would remain as is. But it doesnt happen...

  You may be correct that you do not need a crew on "hot standby" at 4am in Frinton, but you still need to be able to get there quickly enough to maybe save somebody´s life. In a head injury, or a heart attack, 20 minutes each way can make all the difference. The nature of emergencies is that they do not always happen at predictable times.
  
  Of course, it´s all academic until you or somebody you know is the one who needs an ambulance. That´s when the management speak "prioritise the resources more effectively" becomes nonsense, and you would be on the phone every 5 minutes until an ambulance turned up.
  
  Why should public sector workers have no pay rise? (I am not a public sector worker, by the way). A zero pay rise means in effect being 1.9% worse off (and inflation is at its lowest for 3 years). The frontline public sector workers do their jobs under difficult conditions, and at the moment, under threat of losing their jobs at any moment. You may have got your information from the tabloids, but the public sector workers I know are not raking in loads of money, sitting on massive pensions or retiring at 53, they are desperately hoping that the axe does not fall on their head next.
  
  The inefficiency within the public sector is one of too many levels of management. That is what needs to be tackled more. Cutting back ambulance cover will cost somebody a life someday. Axing a level of management will not.
  
  If we as a nation are prepared to spend a fortune on bailing out the banks, or on Afghanistan, or on Trident, then we should be prepared to pay for a decent ambulance service.

  I didn't get my info from the tabloids. I'm an ex public sector manager. I chose to leave as I was fed up with the bureaucracy and constant obstacles to getting anything done."
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