In February this year the Independent reported:
An unprecedented increase in “excess deaths” in England and Wales could be linked to underfunding in the NHS and social care system, new research suggests.
“Relentless cuts” to the health service could be behind 30,000 deaths in 2015, argued researchers in two articles published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
The research that backed up these findings was undertaken by highly credible academics. The government, of course, rubbished their work. I believe it. As a result I want to share what the Royal Society of Medicine said on the findings:
Researchers exploring why there has been a substantial increase in mortality in England and Wales in 2015 conclude that failures in the health and social care system linked to disinvestment are likely to be the main cause.
There were 30,000 excess deaths in 2015, representing the largest increase in deaths in the post-war period. The excess deaths, which included a large spike in January that year, were largely in the older population who are most dependent on health and social care.
Reporting their analysis in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford and Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, tested four possible explanations for the January 2015 spike in mortality.
After ruling out data errors, cold weather and flu as main causes for the spike, the researchers found that NHS performance data revealed clear evidence of health system failures. Almost all targets were missed including ambulance call-out times and A&E waiting times, despite unexceptional A&E attendances compared to the same month in previous years. Staff absence rates rose and more posts remained empty as staff had not been appointed.
Professor Martin McKee, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “The impact of cuts resulting from the imposition of austerity on the NHS has been profound. Expenditure has failed to keep pace with demand and the situation has been exacerbated by dramatic reductions in the welfare budget of £16.7 billion and in social care spending.”
He added: “With an aging population, the NHS is ever more dependent on a well-functioning social care system. Yet social care has also faced severe cuts, with a 17% decrease in spending for older people since 2009, while the number of people aged 85 years and over has increased by 9%.”
“To maintain current levels of social care would require an extra £1.1 billion, which the government has refused.”
Professor McKee continued: “The possibility that the cuts to health and social care are implicated in almost 30,000 excess deaths is one that needs further exploration. Given the relentless nature of the cuts, and potential link to rising mortality, we ask why is the search for a cause not being pursued with more urgency?”
I wish I could answer that question.
The stark fact is that maybe 30,000 people died unnecessarily in a year because of austerity. That is, they died because the government decided that trying to balance its books (which is unnecessary and impossible in the UK at present) was more important than their chance to live.
My question is a simple one and is this. How can anyone vote for a government that decided 30,000 people should die in pursuit of a balanced budget?
I have no answer to that.
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‘My question is a simple one and is this. How can anyone vote for a government that decided 30,000 people should die in pursuit of a balanced budget?’
I’ll suggest why.
Because everyday, millions of people are lied to in this country and base their opinions on those lies.
Everyday. In the papers, online and on the TV and radio. Everyday.
We know what the lies are – for example the macro economy is the same as a household (micro) economy; under performance of the NHS and in our schools is because of immigrants causing excess demand; money is a private thing only and has nothing to do with the government, tax is wrong; Britain is bankrupt – there is no money (thank you Liam Byrne).
A lot of people are very inductive in their learning and this is becoming an inductive state as most of our ‘learning’ is done it seems through the media these days. But as Ross Ashcroft says in his film ‘The Four Horsemen’ – people need to start walking around with their eyes wide open more – becoming more deductive and thinking for themselves. It’s just that those damn Apps take up more of their time.
My view is that only the people can save themselves now from the increasing hyper-marketization of their lives. Too many of them need to wake up. Too many are content to live in this artificially constructed world where the bottom line is all and being clever is recognising that and nothing else. It is a failure of imagination and a triumph of reductionist market culture.
The silver lining is the events of 2008. As a result whole bunch of younger people will be denied what their parents and grand parents now have. They will not stand for it. I believe in them and as a parent nurturing their desire for equality is the most important thing our generation can do for them.
Accepted PSR
But it’s still worth asking
neo-liberalism is gripped by Malthusian/Spencerian thinking and sees life through a distorting mirror of the primacy of money as the arbiter of value. This is a 19th century viewpoint.
Neo-liberalism has to maintain the illusion that resources are insufficient in order to keep its wealth extraction machine going.
IFS this morning:
‘Conservative plans for NHS spending look very tight indeed and may well be undeliverable. A real increase of £8 billion over the next five years would extend what is easily the lowest period of spending increases in NHS history to 12 years (1.4% average annual growth between 2010—11 and 2022—23, with just 1.2% a year from 2016-17 onwards).’
It’s very important this point is made.
“One person might have died!” does not sell newspapers, or gain viewers, in the same way that “30000 unnecessary deaths!!!” does, I guess.
Yes of course Richard – I’m not challenging your question and mine is not a definitive answer either despite my heartfelt conviction in saying what I said.
I was thinking about this the other day – how – despite the evidence of death and hardship from their policies , the Tories are ahead in the polls. For example the social media response to the Manchester atrocity and comparing this to the deaths (suicides) related to cuts in benefits and now to the plausible deaths that might be attributed to NHS underfunding by the Tories.
What I would call the results of economic terrorism perpetrated by the Tories against innocent and vulnerable people (it was private bankers – American ones – that caused the 2008 crash and subsequent economic problems – not the disabled or those living in accommodation that had become too big for them for example).
I remember when the Princess of Wales died. I was at Uni and was working a night shift at a Savacentre in Sydenham to add to my declining LA support grant (thank you LB Lewisham for supporting me BTW – I worked hard and did well).
We used to have the radio on at night as we stacked shelves. At about two o’clock in the morning we heard about that awful high speed car crash in Paris. Later that day I had to go into the Uni library like a good student and as I went in I mingled with the crowds who were laying flowers and gathering there crying and holding on to each other in and around Central London. It was surreal.
I have to admit that I did not get it. I just looked on puzzled wanting to understand what was happening. Sure – it was sad – lives had been lost as many do in road accidents. But it was (to me) as if people were projecting themselves into this awful event in order to have the right to feel (or to join in with others feeling the same). They wanted to feel something, to connect to the event somehow and respond accordingly.
These days the phenomenon is more pronounced as social media has developed.
I also think that those who project themselves into these awful events – such as people responding as though they have lost children (when they have not and they have not even been directly involved) – are then more prone to develop a false consciousness and become angry and fall victim to being manipulated by political/emotional terrorists such as ISIS and UKIP with potentially disastrous results.
Those of us unaffected have a duty to remain objective and not get sucked into the emotion of it all and be exploited.
The only people I feel who have an understandable right feel anger are the relations of the victims themselves – whether they be related to Diana or those poor souls killed in Manchester recently and near Westminster. How wonderful however to see the relations of the victims calling for peace and an end to hate in the midst of their grief.
And god help you if you are not part of what I might call the online ‘Empathy Mafia’. There seem to be unwritten laws about who deserves our empathy and who does not. And I cannot work the rules out at all.
Whether people are victims of atrocities like Manchester or plain and nasty policies like the disabled work capacity assessments that have caused suicides, the bedroom tax, NHS deaths etc., the people affected are ALL victims of bad behaviour and they all deserve our empathy as victims – do they not?
But apparently not! Maybe if there was a much outrage over those denied benefits and whom have killed themselves as a result would this ‘Government’ be little less well thought of.
This area of contemporary of human behaviour is certainly worth more study in my view – so yes – you are right to ask the question. Absolutely right.
Two stories before I go.
1) Two years a go in the town where I work a young Asian man went to the top of a car park in order to jump off. What was bad about this was that attempts to rescue him were hampered by a group of mostly white individuals chanting for him to jump with their mobile phones held aloft waiting to film him if he did so.
Suicides are on the way up. Our housing officers are reporting more of them. We dread summer and undiscovered bodies despite all the Safeguarding we do. A colleague in my office (who has had below inflation wage rises since 2010) still has a little cry to herself (despite having counselling) more than a year after walking in on a disabled tenant who had hung themselves over money worries.
Our rent arrears officers are pushed to the limit with some reportedly at risk of burn out as they try to keep people without money in their homes.
2) At the main railway station of this town 3 yeas ago I watched an elderly woman calmly and deliberately climb down onto the track into the path of a train pulling out of the station. As one passenger ran towards the train waving their arms (the breaks screeched on) I dropped my bike and ran to the woman and pulled her off the track and onto the platform. As the station staff took over I was shocked to see others filming the event on their phones, sending the images to friends and talking excitedly about what they had seen.
What is going on?
That’s a heavy one PSR
I wish I did know what was going on and my one word answer is alienation
People feel oppressed
That is my answer on princess Diana by the way: I didn’t get this either but from those who did the feeling was of sympathy with a victim, the difference from the cases you note being that in this case the victim was supposedly privileged as well
Unless we remove the alienation caused by oppression I can’t see how we go forward
To your figure you must also add those prematurely killed by traffic polution because this government and the previous one do nothing – zilch – about putting in place a plan/policy to tackle this. Thus they end up in court and being fined by the EU, but still fail to produce a strategy that contains anything of substance. So, for at least five more years – which is how long it’d take a decent policy (if one existed) to become law and be implemented – deaths due to traffic polution will continue, as will all the other illnesses and ailments associated with this. Still, I suppose most Tory MPs are wealthy enough to be able to escape to the country whenever they wish, as can/do many of their core voters, so as there are few votes to be gained from taking such action – as is also the case with those dying as a result of austerity – such concerns can be ignored. That’s how far May’s religious convictions stretch.
I doubt her convictions go beyond the Conservative party at prayer and excuse for a garden party level
But she does have convictions about helping out the financial sector and her husband:
‘If I was L&G I would be rubbing my hands in glee that their man has been taken into the heart of No 10. It’s not too much of a surprise though as this is a government head to toe full of former lobbyists.
Oh, and the PM’s now-famous husband Philip? His company, Capital Group, is a shareholder in L&G. There is no government ‘for the many’ when it comes to the Conservatives. Just one for ‘the few’; namely them and their mates in the City.’
Apparently L & G connections with the Tory Party and their response to the provisions of the 2014 care Act lie behind the Social Care policy.
For more: http://www.thecanary.co/2017/05/25/heres-evidence-shows-who-benefit-theresa-may-dementia-tax/
It’s perhaps overgenerous of the RSM to suggest these unexpected deaths are attributable to ‘failures’. It looks more to me like they’re attributable to policy. You probably won’t know about this yet; http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/activists-horrified-by-universal-credit-rules-forcing-sick-claimants-into-work-activity/ Clearly can expect a whole load more excess deaths in future.
That’s dire
It gets worse 🙁 Just imagine trying to complete this lot if you’re genuinely ill https://dpac.uk.net/2017/05/claiming-esa-universal-credit-nobody-unfit-work-anymore/
Apparently those rules had to be dug out because the DWP did not make them public -one can see why.
Ask Andrew Lansley how many thousands of additional people died as a result of his decision to stop the Food Standards Agency running its successful programme to reduce the level of salt in food, and to allow the food industry to in effect set its own targets instead. After a four-year delay, the FSA took it over again in 2014, and it is making progress once more. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/28/coalition-derailed-programme-to-save-lives-by-reducing-salt-in-food
However they may appear on the surface to their supporters, underneath they’re sociopaths. “This disorder is characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, unchecked egocentricity, and the ability to lie in order to achieve one’s goals.” How else to explain such policies that have been at ghe core of Tory ideology since the 1970s?