Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Jacob]

That's awful

[Sheilbh]

It's unfortunate because for the (most likely) mentally deranged person who did this, and others like them...the more incidents like this occur the more I think it becomes something people with mental illness might fixate/think about and become self-perpetuating.

I hadn't thought of that but you're right - a bit like what can happen with school/workplace shootings where the tone and approach in media coverage is essential.

It's just awful

Concerning tweet from an ITV Reporter:

Yeah. I know there's been one or two cases that have had publicity. It is particularly bad for women MPs too from what I understand. One MP (off the record) talked about a man with mental illness coming up to them and saying "I know what car you drive" and describing where they'd been that weekend; similarly another person who told an MP that MPs were "thick and evil" and that "we" know you have a daughter.

But I have a friend whose dad was an MP and he remembers the weirdness as a child of seeing people just come up to his dad - generally to say nice things, but occasionally to abuse him. It's really unacceptable and it's got so many times worse with social media.

Lots of tweets from colleagues - and it's strking the number from Labour MPs - which give the impression of a very nice, kind man. It seems he went out of his way to help new MPs learn the ropes. He was one of the longest-serving MPs, first elected in 1983.

And as Lawrence Freedman's pointed out there's a section in his Wikipedia which actually shows the value of constituency surgeries and the small background work that MPs routinely do that can make a difference in people's lives (I believe he also did a lot of backbench work on animal welfare and energy conservation):

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis
Amess first became involved in this subject when a constituent attended one of his regular constituency surgeries after being diagnosed with endometriosis in January 2016. She highlighted that whilst affecting around 1 in 10 women, there was very little public awareness of the condition.

In March 2018 Amess launched an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis with the aim of raising awareness of the condition, and to investigate how those who suffer from endometriosis can get the support that they need. The secretariat for the APPG is provided by Endometriosis UK, a charity which offers support services, reliable information and a community for those affected by endometriosis. The group was chaired by Amess, with Emma Hardy, Jackie Doyle-Price and Hannah Bardell as vice-chairs.

The experiences of those living with endometriosis have since been raised a number of times in the House of Commons. A Westminster Hall debate on Endometriosis Workplace Support was secured by Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke on 29 October 2019, which saw MPs from across all parties sharing the stories of their constituents suffering from the condition. Similarly Penny Mordaunt has shared a video of an event he managed to organise at the Royal Albert Hall for concert by an orchestra made up of 200 children with learning disabilities.

Amess raised the plight of women with endometriosis in many debates and a number of times at Business Questions, most recently to highlight the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on endometriosis care and to draw attention to the APPG's report that was launched in October 2020.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis launched an inquiry in February 2020 to find out more about the experiences of those living with the condition. The group received over 10,000 responses to its patient survey and held four oral evidence sessions where the first-hand experiences of those who suffer from the condition were heard.

The findings of this inquiry were launched in October 2020 and showed the reality of living with endometriosis, including that average diagnosis time is still 8 years. The report produced a number of recommendations to the Government on how to improve endometriosis care, including a commitment to reduce average diagnosis times, the implementation of NICE guidelines and improved awareness of the condition.

An online launch event was chaired by Amess on 20 October 2020, where Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide and Mental Health, Nadine Dorries MP, said that endometriosis was part of the Government's 'women's health agenda' and that she would work alongside the APPG to make sure that changes are made to improve the lives of those with endometriosis.

Also I just have a lot of time for anyone who celebrated getting a knighthood by dressing up like this and releasing a photo - it's the appropriate level of seriousness for an honour

[Caliga]

I think it's from a GP's surgery. You've got a problem you go to your MP's surgery, like you go to you GP's surgery if you've got a health problem?

Interesting.  We don't use that term here either.  The place where you go to see your GP is the 'doctor's office'.

[garbon]

A "very nice, kind man" who opposed abortion and gay rights plus actively supported Brexit?

Very sad incident, nevertheless.

[Sheilbh]

A "very nice, kind man" who opposed abortion and gay rights plus actively supported Brexit?

Yeah, of course. He was very Catholic - and I think the Pope's a kind and nice man (same for Benny XVI). Unlike the Pope I think he was a big believe in capital punishment too - although he might have shifted on that recently given the Pope's changed the official line on that. I think Starmer's statement noted his faith several times in his statement and that his Catholicism "was central to his political life".

But he's a Brexity hang-em-and-flog-em conservative, representing Southend, a Brexity hang-em-and-flog-em area.

[garbon]

A "very nice, kind man" who opposed abortion and gay rights plus actively supported Brexit?

Yeah, of course. He was very Catholic - and I think the Pope's a kind and nice man (same for Benny XVI). Unlike the Pope I think he was a big believe in capital punishment too - although he might have shifted on that recently given the Pope's changed the official line on that. I think Starmer's statement noted his faith several times in his statement and that his Catholicism "was central to his political life".

But he's a Brexity hang-em-and-flog-em conservative, representing Southend, a Brexity hang-em-and-flog-em area.

So not such a very nice man.

[Josquius]

So this killing. Random act of violence or some idiot from the left throwing away the high ground?
Disturbing stuff.

[Sheilbh]

Counter-terrorism have taken over the investigation (the man was arrested) to determine if there's terrorism. Apparently there's possibly a radical Islamist motivation, but the guy didn't say anything associated with radical Islamist terrorism, so it's more focused on his phone and whether he'd been in contact with other known extremists.

[garbon]

Counter-terrorism have taken over the investigation (the man was arrested) to determine if there's terrorism. Apparently there's possibly a radical Islamist motivation, but the guy didn't say anything associated with radical Islamist terrorism, so it's more focused on his phone and whether he'd been in contact with other known extremists.

They've said he was known to that Prevent programme.

[Sheilbh]

Saw them doing the front pages on the news and I think the "Another MP killed" hit me with this one. It is so grim

[mongers]

Saw them doing the front pages on the news and I think the "Another MP killed" hit me with this one. It is so grim

Dreadful news.

[Sheilbh]

Also interesting from Peter Bottomsley on Newsnight who made the point that there needs to be proportion as bad as this is because MPs are at lower risk than other public servants like social workers etc.

But he then said that it is worse for women and that, they didn't really talk about it, but his wife was an MP for over 20 years (in the 80s and 90s) and "about once every four or five years she was assaulted or threatened violently". And of course Peter Bottomsley's Father of the House and has been an MP since the mid-70s so I think he would have been a colleague of all six MPs who've been killed in the post-war era.

Seeing a woman who worked as a Parliamentary Assistant to Yvette Cooper saying she left her job because of this - she said at a peak she was reporting over 100 death threats in a week. The average was about 50, with lots of police statements etc.

As a few people have pointed out it is a shame that what we hear about the good, basic constituency work that the vast majority of MPs do is when there's an outrage like this and that there is a huge gulf in media representation and the actual job (I weirdly think The Thick of It may capture it the best). One example I saw someone on the left give was Steve Baker - who I mentioned earlier because I am not generally a fan - but, by all accounts, he's a good constituency MP who also does a lot of work in parliament on some not very publicity-attractive but important topics like mental health, combating Islamophobia and the education attainment gap for Muslim kids.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Another worthless Muslim attacking Western society--yet further evidence nothing good comes of the dreadful curse of Islam or its monstrous and evil adherents.

[PDH]

That's the Otto we remember.

[Sheilbh]

Good for you. This year it took us enormous effort to get non-dismissive feedback from our GP practice. It came to near-begging before we could get a GP on the phone who could be bothered to give a F, actually read and understand my wife's blood test report (which took us forever to get them to ask), and not just spot the first excuse for a blood test rerun to get rid of us.

It's been an exhausting and frankly humiliating experience from the overworked lazy dismissive assistants to the overworked lazy dismissive GP who clearly refused to spend a single minute understanding what's in front of her and just jumped to the conclusion that got us out of her hair the quickest (by ordering a 100% pointless and unrelated 3rd blood test). Luckily being annoying enough landed us in front of a GP who actually cared, eventually.

So just to pick up on this my experience has been mixed. For dealing with stuff that came from hospital and required GP follow-up they've been fine (and the hospital's been good but clearly very busy); but if I need an appointment it's been quite challenging.

I also saw the head of the Royal College of Physicians noting that pilots are not allowed to fly for more than 32 hours a week because of the risk and musing that the same should apply to doctors. But this Guardian editorial is more the thing I was wondering about.

First of all I basically don't think it's an "enhanced sense of entitlement" or wrong to have a "right to a particular service" when we're talking about an appointment with a doctor. But secondly the complaint about league tables is just a big throw back to 20 years ago. Yes there are issues with funding (and the GP sector is weird because they're all private sector who negotiate rates for work with the NHS - which is why they get paid extra to do vaccine roll-outs for example because it's not part of their core contract with the NHS), but the point of the NHS or any public service is to serve the public. It's not just "populist 'customer is always right' politics" or a Brexity "if I'm an English person and I want to see my doctor - then I will" - that stuff is actually the entire point of paying for a public service

I know this is just outting me as a right-wing monster but I just feel like if people want in persona appointments then they should be able to get them, if they want a remote appointment then they should be able to get them and that's not an assault on "professional decision-making processes". The public should be able to demand to see a doctor because the public pay for a health service They definitely need more funding to try and get appointments back to within one week rather than within a fortnight.

The Guardian view on GPs: ministers are playing a vicious game
Editorial
Sajid Javid's attempt to blame overstretched family doctors after four months in the job reveals a contempt for frontline services
Thu 14 Oct 2021 19.09 BST

Last modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 05.38 BST

With breathtaking cynicism, Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid have taken a campaign by the Tory-supporting Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday and turned it into government policy. For months, the newspapers have been demanding that GPs return to seeing more patients face to face. Currently, just under 60% of appointments are in person, compared with 80% before the pandemic, with the rest taking place on the phone or online. The newspapers decided that this isn't what the public wants. This week, Mr Javid retreated into his Whitehall office to take aim at medics. On Thursday, he failed to turn up at the Royal College of General Practitioners' conference in Liverpool and issued a series of demands via the media instead.

This is toxic politics. Mr Javid claims to admire family doctors, but his actions indicate the opposite. To call for an immediate return to pre-Covid ways of working, including an end to social distancing in waiting rooms, is irresponsible when the pandemic is still with us. To tell the public that they can "demand" to see a doctor is to undermine professional decision-making processes. To promise league tables, and the naming and shaming of practices that offer too many video appointments, is a transparent attempt to bully a hard-pressed frontline medical service.

Ministers know full well that verbal and physical attacks on NHS staff are increasing. They know too that the underlying problem for the health service is enormous waiting lists, combined with chronic staff shortages (the UK has one of the lowest numbers of doctors per capita in Europe). And they know that public dissatisfaction with an enfeebled and overstretched NHS is one of the most significant political risks they face. That they have responded to this situation by turning on family doctors, in an effort to create a distraction from long-term policy failures, beggars belief.

What makes this even more egregious is that it will undoubtedly make a bad situation worse. In recent years, GPs have been leaving their profession faster than they can be replaced, as the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt acknowledges. In 2015, when he was in charge, the government promised to hire 5,000 more family doctors within five years. Instead, the number has fallen by 4.5% to 28,096 full-time equivalents, at the same time as demand has increased. All the demographic and other factors that are widely understood to place great stress on hospitals and social care providers – an ageing population and rising dementia cases, multiple health issues linked to obesity, high levels of mental illness and distress in young people – increase the burden on GPs also. For too many, the job is unmanageable.

NHS England's new boss, Amanda Pritchard, calls GPs the NHS's "front door". There is no doubt that for an increasing number of people, waiting for someone to open it and admit them is infuriating. Sometimes, these delays carry risks. But for Mr Javid to encourage the public to approach surgeries with an enhanced sense of entitlement, and insist on their right to a particular service, is irresponsible. What makes it even worse is that the shift to a model less focused on in-person consultations, and more reliant on technology, is in line with government policy and was put in place as part of the pandemic response in the first place. It is important to note that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have different systems.

Ministers have agreed to remove some unnecessary tasks, such as the requirement for GPs to write sick notes. Expanding the role of pharmacists in prescribing is a reasonable change that is already under way. But the £250m in promised new funding in no way compensates doctors for the slap in the face that Mr Javid has chosen to deliver after less than four months in the job.