J Hunt and S Hawking - how do we know...

[sidicks]

drainbrain said:

Eh?

I get these bills from 'private sector professionals' who charge by the hour. Are you saying they're billing for less hours than they're doing???

Not a flippin' snowball's chance in hell m8.

No, he's saying that there are plenty of private sector professionals who don't bill clients directly who work much more than their contracted hours.

[anonymous-user]

drainbrain said:

Eh?

I get these bills from 'private sector professionals' who charge by the hour. Are you saying they're billing for less hours than they're doing???

No I'm saying somewhere in, for example, a corporate lawyers employment contract it will say she does 9-5 and get 6 weeks holiday but no one has ever looked past the remuneration section because they know they are going to be doing 9-9, 6 days a week and take 2 weeks holiday. (granted a lawyer was a bad example because they might actually trawl through it out of professional curiosity)

What a client gets billed for has nothing to do with the difference between someones contracted and actual hours.

[drainbrain]

Well I'm obviously on a different planet. I use lawyers etc pretty well constantly even in retirement and one of the first things they do before they do anything for you at all is give you their "terms of business" letter. And I've never seen a ToB missive that didn't state very clearly what their hourly rates are, or known a professional firm to send a bill that didn't adhere to those terms.

More medically relevant, my recent attendance at the dentist was exactly the same. Time based fee.


There you go. Tiny 1-man law firm:

Edited by drainbrain on Thursday 31st August 18:33

[sidicks]

drainbrain said:

Well I'm obviously on a different planet. I use lawyers etc pretty well constantly even in retirement and one of the first things they do before they do anything for you at all is give you their "terms of business" letter. And I've never seen a ToB missive that didn't state very clearly what their hourly rates are, or known a professional firm to send a bill that didn't adhere to those terms.

Do lawyers only deal with external clients? There are numerous professional occupations who work for private companies and who do not bill clients.

[Dixy]

Last Friday my daughter went to work at 8 am, she left the hospital at 11 am on Saturday morning having snatched 30 minutes sleep.
The odd pupil barrister may do it occasionally and the odd accountant may do it at year end, if either screws up no one dies. I would guarantee there will be several reg's that will do the same this and every weekend of the year.

Until you are in it or associated to it you have no idea.

[anonymous-user]

drainbrain said:

Well I'm obviously on a different planet. I use lawyers etc pretty well constantly even in retirement and one of the first things they do before they do anything for you at all is give you their "terms of business" letter. And I've never seen a ToB missive that didn't state very clearly what their hourly rates are, or known a professional firm to send a bill that didn't adhere to those terms.

More medically relevant, my recent attendance at the dentist was exactly the same. Time based fee.


There you go. Tiny 1-man law firm:

Edited by drainbrain on Thursday 31st August 18:33

I was talking about contract between employee and employer analogous to doctor and nhs. What a lawyers client is billed or time a surgeon spends with a scalpel in hand is irrelevant to the point. Don't worry about it ignore everything I wrote.

[968]

fblm said:

I was talking about contract between employee and employer analogous to doctor and nhs. What a lawyers client is billed or time a surgeon spends with a scalpel in hand is irrelevant to the point. Don't worry about it ignore everything I wrote.

It isn't irrelevant where patients lives are concerned. The fact is we work way above our contracted hours to a point where it is unsafe. The most analogous profession would be a pilot in that regard. Pilots also have strictly contracted hours of work in order to be safe. Where this goes awry it's a major problem.

[sidicks]

Dixy said:

Last Friday my daughter went to work at 8 am, she left the hospital at 11 am on Saturday morning having snatched 30 minutes sleep.

The odd pupil barrister may do it occasionally and the odd accountant may do it at year end, if either screws up no one dies. I would guarantee there will be several reg's that will do the same this and every weekend of the year.

Until you are in it or associated to it you have no idea.

What experience do you have of working in the legal or accounting profession or in banking?

[jjlynn27]

sidicks said:

jjlynn27 said:

No insults. Mild mockery of cretinous avoidance of swear filter.

What was the question? If 'no money' then it was answered before. I'd cut defence and abandon idiotic 7day full on NHS which IIRC you were in favour of @ JD dispute thread?
If i issued any other questions, feel free to repeat them as I'm on dodgy Italian 3g

I did? Regardless, supporting a better NHS is not supporting Hunt. Likewise, supporting better education is not the same as supporting Justine Greening and her proposed approaches.

Back to the UK now on the proper internet.
Ok, on the jd thread did you support proposal for 7 days full on NHS? It's a rather binary yes/no answer. You can answer it or you can do usual Sidick avoidance.

[Dixy]

sidicks said:

What experience do you have of working in the legal or accounting profession or in banking?

As usual you just ask questions hoping to muddy the waters but never offer positive suggestions. To answer your question in part, if I had chosen to I could have started to collect my gold plated non-contributory bank pension last year.

So again what suggestions have you.

[Rovinghawk]

968 said:

Rovinghawk said:

FFS!

Your= belonging to you
You're = abbreviation for "you are"

Can you please use the English language properly?

Typed on my iphone. It autocorrected to you're rather than your. I'm well aware of the use of English, thanks very much.

You type "your", the phone corrects it to "you're"? I call bullst, especially as a few pages back you presumably also typed "you're" and the phone autocorrected it to "your". Please stop doing it- I get embarrassed for you.

In addition, do you not check what you've written before you hit the send button?

[sidicks]

Dixy said:

As usual you just ask questions hoping to muddy the waters but never offer positive suggestions. To answer your question in part, if I had chosen to I could have started to collect my gold plated non-contributory bank pension last year.

So again what suggestions have you.

You don't appear to have much knowledge of private sector working practices, that is all.

[jjlynn27]

sidicks said:

Indeed, but the 'oh yes it is' version is supported by data...!!

LOL.

On jd thread, you were quoting (and laughed at for it) order-order as the source for idiotic figures for jd salaries. But like any other thread it always ends with, yes, but what about pensions.

[sidicks]

jjlynn27 said:

LOL.

On jd thread, you were quoting (and laughed at for it) order-order as the source for idiotic figures for jd salaries. But like any other thread it always ends with, yes, but what about pensions.

It was IFS data - if you have a different source that contradicts it then please provide it. Otherwise please go away.

Pensions are part of the cost of the the NHS - sorry you don't understand that.

Edited by sidicks on Thursday 31st August 21:25

[jjlynn27]

sidicks said:

jjlynn27 said:

LOL.

On jd thread, you were quoting (and laughed at for it) order-order as the source for idiotic figures for jd salaries. But like any other thread it always ends with, yes, but what about pensions.

It's IFS data - if you have a different source that contradicts it then please provide it. Otherwise please go away.

Again, did you or did you not support Hunt's proposal for 7 day full on NHS. Yes or No, thanks.

As for jd salaries from order-order, do you really want me to requote that fiasco of yours again? Y'know the 'oh I didn't actually look at the figures in detail'.



But, for now, support for 7 days full on NHS (Hunt's proposal) do you support it or not?

[sidicks]

jjlynn27 said:

Again, did you or did you not support Hunt's proposal for 7 day full on NHS. Yes or No, thanks.

As for jd salaries from order-order, do you really want me to requote that fiasco of yours again? Y'know the 'oh I didn't actually look at the figures in detail'.



But, for now, support for 7 days full on NHS (Hunt's proposal) do you support it or not?

I WILL NOT FEED THE TROLL

[jjlynn27]

sidicks said:

jjlynn27 said:

Again, did you or did you not support Hunt's proposal for 7 day full on NHS. Yes or No, thanks.

As for jd salaries from order-order, do you really want me to requote that fiasco of yours again? Y'know the 'oh I didn't actually look at the figures in detail'.



But, for now, support for 7 days full on NHS (Hunt's proposal) do you support it or not?

I WILL NOT FEED THE TROLL

Nobody is asking you to.

All you are asked to do is to answer a very simple question; do you support Hunt's proposal for full on 7 days NHS?

[968]

Rovinghawk said:

You type "your", the phone corrects it to "you're"? I call bullst, especially as a few pages back you presumably also typed "you're" and the phone autocorrected it to "your". Please stop doing it- I get embarrassed for you.

In addition, do you not check what you've written before you hit the send button?

Because I can't be bothered, and the fact that it irritates a ridiculous pedant so much, makes it all the more amusing to do so. Why not stick to the topic at hand, provide a contribution or perhaps stop posting?

[Dixy]

sidicks said:

You don't appear to have much knowledge of private sector working practices, that is all.

Perhaps if you remove the blinkers things may appear clearer, personally I only have direct Knowledge of the private sector.

Now will you answer the question and make a suggestion or do you wish to continue wallowing in your muddy water.

[WatchfulEye]

fblm said:

My personal experience aside, I think it's blindingly obvious that many NHS medical staff provide value far in excess of their pay, but saying you're contracted and paid for x hours and work x plus hours does not give any indication at all as to value for money. Saying it does sounds petty and weakens your case considerably, especially when you're talking to private sector types for whom contracted hours mean nothing. A qualified doctor making 50k, working 70 hours a week sounds like ridiculously good value to me (ignoring that those hours sound unsafe to me) but their value for money is the same if they are contracted to do 10 hours or 100. IMO framing the discussion in terms of contracted hours and unpaid overtime, like one would a minimum wage job, devalues the profession. As a profession you need to fire your negotiators!

This goes back to the 2003 consultant contract renegotiation.

The Health Secretary at the time had got the idea that consultants could not be trusted to exercise professional judgement as to what constituted an appropriate amount of work for a salaried consultant. Prior to this, consultants were employed under the 1948 model contract, which recognised a consultant's seniority and professional independence and judgement. However, Milburn was adamant that consultants were overpaid and underworked, spending most afternoons on the golf course.

He was adamant that consultants would need to be contractually obligated to account for every hour worked and would only be paid for the hours actually worked. And this was the core of the new contract - consultants would have a job plan where each working week was sliced up into pieces for each individual type of work: clinical care, admin, education, professional development, managerial responsibilities, etc. and they would be held to that job plan, and paid according to it.

Many consultants were outraged because this was extremely patronising to senior professionals at the top of their field. However, the government had made a serious miscalculation in the hourly rate, having assumed that the allegation that consultants bunked off to the golf course most afternoons was correct. When the BMA actually ran the numbers with realistic hours, the effect was that consultants could expect a very substantial pay rise. As a result, other than a few consultants who held out on principle, the majority fell over themselves to sign up.

The problem is that we are now stuck with this - it's a contractual obligation to have an annual meeting with managers, and account for all activities, and provide evidence of the amount of time being spent in each activity, in order to get paid.

There have also been changes in the way in which junior doctors work, but for other reasons. Historically, hours were often very long - as a junior I used to do a shift once per month which ran from 9 am on Friday until 5 pm on Monday, on duty 24/7 for that period. In practice, the work intensity while hard, was tolerable. The Friday and Monday 9-5 was normal daytime work. The out-of-hours stuff was intermittent, emergency work, with some planned stuff on Saturday/Sunday. In general, you'd get time from breaks to go and watch TV between tasks, get a decent lunch, get to bed about 11 pm, and maybe take 1 or 2 calls between midnight and 7 am. The problem is that for various legal and contractual reasons, this isn't possible. Additionally, the productivity demanded is much higher due to various efficiency drives. For example, patients coming for surgery on Monday, would previously be asked to turn up first thing on Monday morning. Now, they're told to turn up on Sunday evening. This means that the junior doctors, in between the emergencies, now have to check over the elective surgical cases on Sunday night, and make sure that they are ready to go - i.e. no health deterioration, blood transfusions ready, all paperwork in order, etc. Additionally, in order to get total hours worked down, fewer juniors will be on duty at a time (so that on-call periods are further apart). The result, is that the intensity of work is much higher. Towards the end of my junior years, if I was doing a 9pm - 9am shift - there would be occasions when there would not even be time to stop for a drink of water, it would just be continuous work - for example, I once counted over 150 separate phone calls/pages in one single shift. That sort of level of stress and constant requirement for activity/concentration is much less tolerable - so its not surprising that people are more concerned about hours worked under such conditions than the conditions which prevailed in earlier years.

Edited by WatchfulEye on Thursday 31st August 22:30